Crown-wearing kings and regalia-bearing queens,

As you read these very words, you might - by claim of blood or right of conquest - be happily nesting in a Crusader Kings III throne. Perhaps you’re just about to become king, just about to plop one of our lovingly rendered crowns on your most worthy head. Congratulations! That’s one heck of a moment to celebrate.

Enter: the Coronation Activity. This first, and very likely most iconic, sacral moment of kingship is the centerpiece of our laser-focused new event pack. Our fans have long yearned to see this ceremony realized in digital cathedrals and in virtual flesh. I, humble Brother Jason of the design scriptorium, am here to give you a sense of the kingly activity to come.

\[Spoilers, I guess?]

With this event pack, we tried something a little different from the formula employed in Wandering Nobles, Wards & Wardens and Friends & Foes: where these prior event packs scattered little tasty flavor treats throughout the game, Coronations is instead one single, discrete bundle of highly visible and mechanically impactful content. You will not have to search it out. This DLC presents itself to you, in fanfare and anticipation, the moment… you die. Or, well, the moment you graduate to kingship. Either one is good.

So, yes, this DLC is focused squarely on the beginning of a new reign, on your initial years as a sovereign. They’re often dramatic years, aren’t they? With factions, claimants, new friends, councillors and rivals, new goals to set, and new boundaries to gaze upon. Your ruler’s Coronation won’t take place in isolation from these fresh horrors and newfound delights, no: our intent is that the Activity helps them situate themselves in their new position. It should highlight your new foes and help you identify the sources of your new character’s strength. By holding a Coronation, you might hope to - without the strain of war - address the teething problems of new rule that we all know well (factions, claimants, etc). This might end, however, in your coronation being a venue for your humiliation and, even, deposition. Don’t fear, though. Such a debacle would require a few significant political miscalculations on your part.

\[These vassals don’t seem to like me very much]

Conversely, if your succession is smooth as butter on warm toast, then Coronations become a fine exercise in patting yourself on the back. A beloved, highly capable ruler has every right to pull through with fresh modifiers, currencies and incentives in hand!

A soon-to-come developer diary will dig deeper into the mechanics of the Coronation Activity and the Oaths on offer. What I present to you now is a top-level overview.

Coronations are a new Activity type available to Kings and Emperors. They are accompanied by a new Realm Law, which states whether your ruler is Crowned or Uncrowned. While Uncrowned, you suffer Opinion and Legitimacy maluses; the only way to become Crowned is to host a Coronation. Both the Activity and the new laws are DLC-only content, and will not affect players who don’t own this event pack.

\[Soon, soon you will be crowned and these modifiers will be history…]

You may only host a Coronation when first becoming a King or Emperor: thus, a Coronation host must either be a new heir succeeding to the throne, or a ruler who has just increased their title tier. The majority of CK sovereigns will only ever hold one Coronation, but this DLC strongly incentivizes everyone king-tier and above to host a Coronation.

The Coronation Activity brings together courtiers, vassals and neighboring rulers to witness the creation of a new sovereign, to socialize, and to politic frenetically in the shadows. Equipped with an array of Intents for hosts and attending characters, and with a wide range of events, Coronation is a relatively reliable source of Legitimacy, Opinion and Prestige (for the host), but can be employed towards many other ends as well.

\[Why thank you, pointy hat man]

Mechanically, the Coronation Activity focuses on replayability, on reactivity to your current situation, and on agency for both the attendees and host. Through time and across space, coronation ceremonies tended to hit many of the same beats, to use many of the same ideas and phrases, but the context of their words were ever-changing, and we designed with that mutability in mind. These moments were never merely ceremonial. They were always also political.

\[Plenty of opportunities for the new sovereign to get to know their vassals]

Our guiding principle for Coronation flavor was to create content that feels truly regal, truly historic, worthy of Charlemagne, Chinggis, and mighty Baldwin of the great and righteous Latin Empire (is it Splintered Crusade o’clock?). Indeed, because Coronations can only be held by king and emperor-tier rulers… if someone’s disrespecting a host at their own Coronation, that someone is going to have a damn good reason, and is very likely going to pay dearly for their poor manners.

The main regional flavor focuses of this DLC are Christian and Western European. Therein are found the most widely-recognized symbols of medieval coronation, and furthermore - the rites of coronation across Christendom, though varied in order and form, were honestly quite surprising to me in their relative uniformity. That’s not to say there aren't triggered events and flavor for different faiths and government types! These are just a little harder to spot than our orbus cruciger activity icon.

As I mentioned, Coronations can either be an absolute cakewalk or a rough ride, based on the competence of your ruler, the wealth at your disposal, and the opinion of your attendees. Magnificence, the measure of a Coronation’s success, is the main metric we use to determine how troubled and unflattering your Coronation is becoming - or how majestic and glorious! It’s drawn from the Coronation’s setup, from the actions of the host, and the maneuvering of the most significant friendly and hostile attendees.

All I’ll say right now is… you probably don’t want to skimp on the Activity Options, unless you really have to.

\[Keep things feeling magnificent and you won’t be disappointed]

A King is made by the assent of the church, of his nobles, and I guess the common people. Coronations aim to highlight all these relationships, and give both host and guest the means to explore them. To aid in this, we have added a widget to the Coronation Activity interface to help you track the most powerful Supporters (characters who like you, the Host) and Detractors (jerks) at your Coronation. These groupings don’t mean anything beyond the Activity, but have a significant impact on its outcomes.

\[Major Supporters and Detractors are shown on the right. These are the attendees best able to affect a Coronation’s successfulness]

Attendees may use their Intents to support the new sovereign, to undermine the Coronation, or - most often - to push forward their own interests. Hosts, meanwhile, use Intents mainly to focus on one group of attendees over another, and manage the members of that group.

The Coronation Activity can be held as a regular old Coronation, or a more special type: Anointment.

Only available to emperor-tier rulers of appropriate faiths, Anointment is a grander ceremony that features your Head of Faith as crowning officiant. It must be held at a Holy Site, and has some additional requirements which weed out sinners and illegitimate sovereigns. Anointment offers additional bonuses, particularly where Legitimacy and the Opinion of others are concerned.

\[Behold: the Pope oiling you up]

Though, as I’ve said earlier, the body of this DLC is firmly rooted in the early reign, its arms reach out across your ruler’s years on the throne. During Coronations, you will be called upon to select an Oath, a timed Decision that is in essence an objective for your rule. Sometimes, the transition from one PC to another can dull a player’s sense of purpose and stagger the momentum of their game. Committing your new ruler to an Oath sets you on a new path, and may serve to get things rolling again!

More info to come on Oaths soon.

I bid you farewell, friends, kings, queens, and gamers. Until next I may write of crowns and royal heads and downwards, placing-type motions of the hands.

If you have any thoughts or ideas about Coronations in Crusader Kings III, do sound off in the comments!

Welcome to another summer Dev Diary! As the Swedes are lazily shuffling in the door after vacations, we’ll be discussing the map visuals. My name is Petter Lundh. I’m the Art Director for Crusader Kings III for the last two years, previously 2D Lead (my work might be most familiar in the form of the Iberia, Tours, and Persia loading screens)

For All Under Heaven, we're undertaking our most ambitious expansion yet: extending the map to encompass all of Asia. This represents a big undertaking that goes beyond just extending the geography.

While the map has seen new assets trickle in since release, the overall look remains unchanged. During those five years we’ve filled a big bucket of visual ideas we’re eager to implement though, and this expansion proved the perfect opportunity to give the entire map a facelift.

This is mainly an artistic reimagining and a modernizing of our workflow. It doesn’t involve fancy new engine tech—we’re using the same features that have been available to the modding community already. This means you’ll be able to put your own spin on these changes, provided you’re up for tinkering with shader code (or coerce ChatGPT to do it for you).

We also plan to add additional documentation that will make it easier for new modders to get started, though this may come later. Moreover, we're adding optional settings for some of the larger changes that impact performance.

In the olden days (CK3 release), we painted heightmaps and terrain masks by hand. This took our team months to complete, and any increase in detail would exponentially increase the workload. This process leaves little room for iteration and course correction underway.

The old mountains were created mostly from a tiling normal map. This technique results in visual noise in dense mountain regions—something especially apparent when extending the Himalayas eastward. We would rather have a more realistic appearance that mimics real erosion patterns. Mountains should feel more like real mountains.

We adopted the terrain generation software Gaea to solve this problem. It’s a tool that creates realistic heightmaps and material masks through simulating real erosion patterns. We can generate complex terrain far more efficiently than with manual painting, and we no longer have to start from scratch when iterating on the general look.

The scale of terrain features remains largely the same. There’s a few reasons for this:

• We used the old heightmap as a base since the shape of the map also has gameplay implications.

• We find that the stylized scale of mountains look best when zoomed in, even though a more realistic scale can feel better zoomed out. If we adopted a real world scaling, most mountains would appear as noise when zoomed in (at the level where you can actually inspect the terrain).

Here’s what the process looks like:

1. We divide the input heightmap ocean masks into tiles.

2. Each tile gets processed through Gaea, which outputs a final heightmap, overlay colormap and masks for the individual tiling materials.

3. All the output tiles are then stitched together, leaving us with large texture files that cover the entire map

As an extra complication we have divided the world into 7 biomes that each have their own set of tiling textures and material masks that define its character. The above steps are run individually for each biome, and stitched together at the very end to create the final map.

For each biome, we’ll gather references and attempt to extract some unique color palette that makes it look different from other places.

When we are iterating on the look, we work with a single tile. We'll pick a prototype tile that is representative of a particular biome and refine that particular tile - when we are happy with the result, we do a full build of the entire world, which can take up to 3 hours.

Here is an anatomical diagram of sorts of the CK3 map:

The improvements go beyond the heightmap and terrain textures. We have taken a careful look at the lighting and shaders for all map elements. Subtle tweaks are added to most elements to improve readability and make them aesthetically blend together in a nicer way.

• Map text now has a subtle texture and softer appearance - it should feel less digital and easier on the eyes.

• The Political Map has a higher res texture with less apparent tiling.

• The water now has more varied detail and color in different parts of the world. There are improved wave patterns along the shore, and overall the scale and wave texture has been balanced for a more realistic feel.

• Effects blend more naturally between zoom levels, removing some long-standing pop-in and glitches that were noticeable in the transition between paper map, political and terrain map modes. Speaking of zoom, you can now zoom in closer than before!

Lastly, we have reworked the terrain lighting. Terrain and map objects now have separately adjustable parameters that let us tweak their values individually, allowing us an easier time making them both look great. The map is generally brighter and important interactable objects should pop more.

We've added cloud shadows that creep across the landscape. To top it all off, we're adding a Terrain Map Mode that lets you view the entire world in this enhanced visual style.

We hope you’ll like it!

(If you don’t, you can disable cloud shadows and some of the other shader-based changes in the game settings)

\[Iceland before-and-after]

\[Spain before-and-after]

\[Arabia before-and-after]

\[Britannia before-and-after]

\[India before-and-after]

\[Italy before-and-after]

\[Japan in All Under Heaven]

---

Hey, this is Lucas Ribeiro, 2D Art Lead. As some might’ve noticed from our previous dev diaries, we have a new illustrated paper map for All Under Heaven. This asian-folklore inspired map covers the entirety of the game world and will be used by default by most east asian cultures. Our original paper map has also been extended all the way to the east. Besides cultural triggers, players will also be able to pick which paper map style they’d rather use in the graphics tab of the settings menu.

Let’s have a look at some snapshots from the new illustrated map:

Around Japan we can observe the Kappa, the Ushi-oni and the Baku (Or… is that the Bulgasari by the east coast of the Korean peninsula?).

Between Korea and China, Cholima streaks across the sky. Surrounding China we can observe the Fenghuang bird and the first of our cardinal direction beasts, the Azure Dragon of the East. More of these beasties are appropriately positioned in the map…

…Such as the Vermillion Bird of the South, under India…

…the White Tiger of the West by the Iberian Peninsula …

…and finally, the Black Turtle of the North by Scandinavia.…

We have endeavored to represent the terrain features of the world in a style more reminiscent of Chinese paintings and Shan Shui, with bold paint strokes and intricate natural patterns. The leafy steep mountains should reflect this very clearly.

For the original map extension, we kept the style inspired in the Olaus Magnus Carta Marina. The familiar mountain, forest, desert, etc. patterns have been extended all the way to the East as well.

---

Hello, Cordelion here, one of the Game Designers currently working on All Under Heaven! The look of the map isn't the only thing that has been getting an update: borders and names have been, as well! The de jure structure of China has changed and evolved significantly over the summer as we've processed the tremendous outpouring of incredibly valuable feedback that we've received since the reveal, both internally (with many thanks to our fantastic beta testers) and externally (with many thanks to all of you!). So let's dive in!

At the empire tier, the main change you may notice now is that the names were previously inspired by dynasties that once ruled these lands in ancient times, but are now significantly more regional than dynastic in flavor. Liang is now Zhongyuan, Wu has become Jingyang, Yue changed to Lingnan, Shu transformed into Liangyi, and Qin evolved into Yongliang.

These names are, to be clear, more for general reference and suitability as labels for unformed de jure empire tier: anyone who comes to rule one of these as an independent entity still may adopt one among a range of proper venerable dynastic names!

The kingdom structure has undergone some changes, also - you may note the replacement of the phonetically repetitive Jingdongdong with Qingxu, while the previous northern de jure kingdom of Yanyun has been divided into Raole, Daibei, and Youji, allowing for more historical assignments and more piecemeal northern reclamation - or southward expansion, if you happen to be a nomadic dynasty!

As the terrain map has been refined, so too has the distribution of impassable terrain - the Sichuan basin is ringed with strategically challenging peaks and ranges, reflecting its historically significant natural geographic barriers, while coastal Fujian also exhibits a significant mountain presence - eight parts mountain, one part water, one part fields, as at least one book I consulted put it.

I’m also here with something else new: the county-tier map of China, which wasn’t quite ready to show off the last time we talked about this new part of the game world, but that I’m more than happy to give you a better look at today. For those of you who may be unfamiliar with the obvious preponderance of -zhou, it’s a standard administrative suffix for this level of jurisdiction throughout Chinese history - one that remains an element of many major cities, such as Hangzhou and Suzhou, even up to the present day!

That’s all that I have for you today - hopefully you’ve enjoyed this brief look at how this part of the map is coming along. I’d love to share even more of what I’ve been working on with you, but that information is reserved for dev diaries to come and I’ll not be the one to spoil them ahead of time: next week we’ll be back with something a bit more sizable for you to dig into! Thanks for stopping by, and I’m very much looking forward to seeing you explore and experience everything that All Under Heaven has to offer yourselves soon enough!

Hello and welcome! I am @Trin Tragula, one of the design leads at Studio Black. In this third regional feature diary for All Under Heaven, we will be covering Southeast Asia, with a special focus on the new Mandala and Wanua government types and how we will use them to highlight the unique aspects of the region itself. We will also cover the new Great Project feature, as well as how we deal with Tributaries in this expansion; while tributaries were introduced in Khans of the Steppe, they don’t work in quite the same way for these sedentary states.

---

In our timeline, this region was quite different compared to China in the north. It's extremely diverse, with a wide range of faiths and cultures within it.

\[Screenshot of Southeast Asia in the 867 start]

In large parts, Southeast Asia is home to a wide range of tribal polities. These are spread over a geographic area that is just as varied, featuring deep river valleys, jungles, and high mountain ranges. In such a place, waterways (seas as well as rivers) are what links peoples to each other, but despite skilled boat builders and sailors, the region presents many challenges in keeping a larger state together.

Realms in this region have, up until recently, tended to be much more transitory in nature than China, Europe, or even India. The norm here is a looser network of city-states bound together by personal loyalties to popular and powerful rulers; these then break apart after the death of the personality that brought them together.

\[Screenshot of Borobudur]

In the Dharmic faiths of India (Buddhism and Hinduism), rulers have found the authority and unifying ideology needed to unite larger realms. They are still centered around great leaders, but with Brahman priests as their allies, they aspire to become living gods: Devarajas.

The Devaraja concept is built upon the Indian idea of an ideal ruler, someone who rules with the gods' favor. In Southeast Asia, this morphs into the idea that a popular king is actually a god personified himself. Religious ritual and kingship blend in enormous temple cities, where subjects and remote tributaries alike all come together to fund and construct great public works. Monuments can be both religious and expressions of royal power, as giant statues of Dharmic gods carry the face of the very ruler walking among his subjects. The capital temple complex becomes the center of a Mandala, with subservient villages, cities, and tributary kings surrounding it.

Nonetheless, even the Devaraja realms have a fleeting element. Smaller states may pay tribute to the god-king, but after one dies or a more persuasive one makes themselves known, they can reconsider their allegiance; on the periphery of the Mandala realm, loyalties change quickly.

Southeast Asia is, as mentioned, a diverse region. Alongside the states like the ones I have described here, there is also the Viet and the Kingdom of Nanzhao (later Dali) that operate quite differently. We covered these in a previous dev diary by @PDX_Chop so we will not talk about those again today, but this introduction would be incomplete without mentioning them.

I will now hand over to @Distantaziq, who will discuss how we have endeavored to portray the region. They’ll detail the mechanics we’ve developed to represent the Mandala realms and the surrounding non-Dharmic tribal realms in All Under Heaven.

---

Greetings! I'm Distantaziq, one of the designers working on All Under Heaven!

Today, we will be exploring the God-Kings and Queens of Southeast Asia -- Mandala! Historically, these governments heavily rely on religion and faith, revolving around the one Mandala ruler who stepped up with the claim to be a divine being.

\[Map of the Kingdom of Angkor in 1066 with tributaries and vassals]

From a balancing perspective, the design intent with Mandalas is to present the player with a new challenge. As we will discuss below, Mandalas start out weaker, especially compared to being consistently powerful Feudal or Clan government rulers of comparable size. However, if you overcome the initial difficulties, you work over generations to reach unseen heights of power – as long as you take care not to lose your divinity, and prepare your heir accordingly…

As mentioned, Mandala revolves around faith, and in line with this, Piety will be the Mandala’s main resource.

Building your first Mandala Capital Temple Complex? Use (mainly) Piety.
Designating your divine heir? Use Piety.
Convincing your immediate surroundings that you indeed are a divine being that they should devote their life and kingdoms to? …well. Accumulate Piety.

And Piety levels!

\[The tooltip for Level of Devotion, featuring additional Piety levels]

The Mandala government, being so thoroughly intertwined with faith, religion, and divinity, has unique access to three additional Levels of Devotion: Divine, Demigod and Godlike.

Now, how do you become Godlike, you might ask? Well, it's simple: It is divinity proven over generations.

\[A truly Godlike Ruler of Angkor]

Or more practically put: if your character reaches one of the new Levels of Devotion, your successor gains a buff that allows them to progress to the next Level of Devotion, and so on. This can continue until you establish a lineage of godlike characters.

Oh, and make sure not to die the wrong way in relation to your Aspect. Did you ever hear about that Serenity-Aspect God king who died from a local epidemic? No? I didn't think so.

\[9 levels of devotion in a grid, ranking from Sinner to Godlike]

And yes, we do need to showcase some truly decadent art icon renders for this specific feature!

So, what more might a mighty God-King Devaraja possibly need in this world, you might ask? Well, how about temples?

In All Under Heaven, we’re introducing an additional holding type: the Temple Citadel. This will be the main holding for Mandala rulers, and will also be valid as a capital for most other landed governments (alongside the Castle Holding) in order to ensure it remains viable if the area is conquered by a non-Mandala ruler.

The Temple Citadel of your capital is the main location for your Capital Temple Complex; a temple with additional defences and a fierce focus on Levels of Devotion, and the foundation for any self-respecting God-King. These Great Buildings are built using the new Great Projects feature, which are collaborative efforts between yourself and your subjects. More on them in a future dev diary!

The resulting Great Building, or Capital Temple Complex, supports your realm in expanding your domain limit and vassal limit within your Mandala realm, and by increasing your Radiance as a God-King (your ability to attract tributaries and vassals).

\[The building breakdown for the Capital Temple Complex Great Building, complete with 5 levels]

Of course, only a Mandala may enjoy the effects of such a building. Should you stop being a Mandala or if the building should come under control of a feudal or tribal heathen, it won’t have much use other than possibly as a tourist attraction.

\[One of the effects of completing the base tier Capital Temple Complex Great Project]

Did you just start off as a new Mandala and didn't get the Temple Citadel memo? Well, no Temple Citadel, no problem!

Before even starting the construction of a Capital Temple Complex, the Mandala ruler needs to pick one of four Mandala Aspects. Loosely based on the Hindu god aspects, these Aspects should heavily impact the way you choose to approach your Mandala playthrough.

• Creation

  • Unlocks bonuses to chaining construction and gains piety from child rearing

  • Should primarily pass on through peaceful means

• Serenity

  • Unlocks bonuses to Befriending, as well as including Allies in the Request Contribution interaction

  • Should primarily pass on through peaceful means

• Destruction

  • Unlocks additional Casus Belli and bonuses to Military Power

  • May also pass on through combat or certain violent deaths

• Trickery

  • Unlocks additional schemes like Disbelieve Mandala and provided bonuses to certain Schemes (like using Coerce Tributary against someone of a higher tier)

  • May also pass on through being murdered

As one may note in the breakdown, as well as mentioned in a previous paragraph, you don't just get to die in any way to have your heir be able to level up to the next level of devotion -- a God of Destruction may die on the battlefield and have their existence be canonized, but a God of Trickery dying from being a drunkard? Maybe not so venerable.

Each of the Aspects also come with their own set of requirements in order to achieve the next level of the aspect. This system, together with your Level of Devotion and Capital Temple Complex Tier feeds into…

Multiple rulers in Southeast Asia claim to be the next Devaraja, asserting their own divinity? Well, how impressive is your Temple Complex?
Mandala Radiance, which indicates your attractiveness and helps you gauge your competition, is unlocked as soon as you have orchestrated the construction of your first tier Temple Complex.

\[Work in Progress mapmode for Mandala, denoting who might accept a Tributarization offer]

This Radiance should heavily impact who the minor rulers of the area should want to pledge themselves to. They might even leave their current Suzerain if that ruler is perceived as impious to join a more attractive Devaraja.

Compared to Aspects, Decrees offer a more flexible way of ruling your realm. So, what do you decree, oh Divine Ruler?

\[Image of the Mandala Laws window, depicting the Decrees]
Choose your Decree to primarily affect the current focus of your devotees (or subjects, however you want to call them). Is your current focus Prosperity, Expansion, or Reverence right now? What do you aim to do next?

A Mandala's main subject will be the tributary. With faith being more relevant than cemented relations via vassalization, this system is intended to give a fairly loose realm setup.

Mandalas hold less land directly, instead relying mainly on their tributaries. While vassals still exist in a Mandala realm, they are more limited here than in other governments. You can also integrate more tributaries as vassals as you expand your Capital Temple Complex. A tributary is unable to engage in factions, has less opinions about what you get up to, and can engage in Tribute Missions to their Devaraja. On the other hand, they also might break away if you turn out not to be as divine as you say or if you treat them badly.

\[A grossly overstepped domain limit]

All of this is reflected in lower domain as well as vassal limit, and more tributaries on game start.

The emphasis in the Mandala realms is offering alternatives to simply going to war to claim new tributaries or expand your realm and divinity. Subjugation wars, for instance, will generate regular Tributaries instead of piety-granting Mandala Tributaries unless you go heavily into the Destruction Aspect.

One of these alternatives-to-war is the new scheme Coerce Tributary, which is one of the cornerstones for Mandala play. It is a Political Scheme that looks at your chosen Mandala Aspect and associated skill, then allows you to attempt coercing another ruler to become your Tributary -- that you're the divine ruler they've been waiting for.

\[The Mandala Ruler is anticipating the outcome of the successful Coerce Tributary scheme - events are still Work in Progress!]

Beware though; if the Tributary you're chatting up is already a Tributary, then their current Suzerain might incentivize them to stay, or you might even have to fight in order to defend that Tributary as they break away and join your fold.

\[The Suzerain of the targeted Tributary gets the option to intervene in the Coerce Tributary scheme - events are still Work in Progress!]

Or you don't help them, which severs their Tributary status and burns your bridge with that particular Tributary.

\[The target of Coerce Tributary was incentivized to stick around, costing the Suzerain a bunch of resources - events are still Work in Progress!]

Regardless, you may have gained a new Tributary, but you definitely meddled with their Suzerain's (presumably a competing Mandala ruler) plans.

---

The islands are a virtual petri dish of faiths and cultures. We have very few sources of documentation from the time before larger faiths and realms significantly influenced the cultures and beliefs of the islanders.

\[Screenshot of Maritime Southeast Asia in 1066]

In light of this, we have aimed to add the most prominent ones.

\[Screenshots of the Philippines in 1066]

Including small bits of Papua, the lion's share of the maritime Southeast Asian archipelago is featured on the map.

This is a heavily sea-based government form, which historically (as mentioned) came under the subject of larger realms and religions. They are still a tribal government type, however, and as such, live under its constraints. If you want to progress further and become more advanced in terms of innovations and development, then you will want to eventually adopt a different style of government.

As the Wanuas are in the islands of Southeast Asia, a couple of Mandala upstart kingdoms are already available (some which later morphed into more powerful historical kingdoms like Srivijaya or Majapahit after our end date). However, if one desires to embark on the journey from Wanua to a powerful Mandala God-King, then that is entirely possible.

As long as you either have adopted a Dharmic faith (or worked hard enough to reform your own faith), it is but a simple button press away, granting you access to islands that are ripe for the picking…

\[A screenshot of the Adopt Mandala Rule Decision for the Wanua Rulers]

In addition to the cultural flavor, Wanua will be able to traverse the sea and raid, naturally. We are also looking into more ways of making the Wanua feel special and fun to play; for example, being more dependent on Legitimacy (which they would receive from being Mandala Tributaries).

---

Another addition with All Under Heaven is the Great Projects feature! This allows several rulers to come together and fund various parts of projects that would be very expensive or take ages to fund individually.

For Mandala, the Capital Temple Complex is such a project; a physical manifestation of your spiritual might where your followers may come to pay tribute or simply worship you. The temple comes in 5 tiers, and once you have completed the first tier you have officially started your path towards godhood (should you manage to defend it, of course).

Each tier requires a specific set of contributions that you or any of your subjects may fund; depending on who funds it, that specific ruler gains the spoils of such a benevolent act, as well as the appreciation of the founder (in this case you).

\[Work In Progress Great Project window featuring the Contributions of a Mandala Capital Upgrade]

There are also optional contributions, for those who absolutely must have that golden dome, that yield additional rewards for the contributor.

If you are just starting off on your Mandala journey or your subjects for one reason or the other needs an additional nudge in order to actually contribute those archways to your project, there's also the Request Contribution button.
Inside, you may be able to incentivize their request via hooks, bribes, forcing them with your oppressive pious spirit - whatever might convince them to make the right call.

Once you have completed the final tier -- an achievement likely spanning generations -- you will have proven yourself an established Devaraja ruler and will receive huge bonuses to your Mandala way of life.

In China, the great projects are more focused on large-scale infrastructure and other improvements that require several contributors; examples include building sections of the Great Wall or improving the Grand Canals.

These projects allow the Emperor to either contribute significantly on his own, displaying his might and benevolence as the Son of Heaven, or they present an opportunity for ambitious subjects vying for the imperial graces…

Another opportunity for benevolent actions that improve your own standing is provided by the Great Projects that spawn from Natural Disasters. While Natural Disasters may spawn in geographically turbulent areas all over the map, only those in China will affect the Dynastic Cycle and potentially impact the Emperor’s standing, depending on how they deal with it. More on Natural Disasters and their implications for the Dynastic Cycle will be covered in a future Dev Diary.

Needless to say, this feature opens up significant opportunities for modding and new additions; not only grand buildings, but great feats of humanity which can be showcased for generations to come!

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Both Mandala and Hegemonic tributaries may go on Tribute Missions to their Suzerain, primarily to strengthen their own Legitimacy, but also to partake in the wealth and grandeur typically associated with their Suzerain.

Historically, the act of paying tribute was often both a matter for states and a very direct personal action, with one ruler acknowledging another as their better and bringing them a gift to prove this. The fact that one party considers the other their suzerain does not mean that there cannot be reciprocity however; in return for paying tribute, the tributary might gain benefits at home (they appear as a more rightful King due to being acknowledged by a more powerful Suzerain) or even receive gifts to bring back home (essentially a form of trade).

Since the passive payment of a resource over time does not quite cover the interpersonal aspects of a relationship like this, we have added what we call Tribute Missions to be used for tributaries of the more voluntary types that you see in East Asia. To preserve these relationships, at least one such tribute needs to be undertaken per Suzerain's lifetime.

The Pay Tribute missions start off with a Decision which allows you to determine what tribute you want to bring, and types vary depending on the Suzerain. For example, if they utilize Eunuchs (like the Chinese Admin government) you may gift a Eunuch. If they have concubines (again, like the Chinese Admin government) you may gift a concubine. Standard tributes of Gold or Herd (if you're a Nomad tributary) are always available.

\[Image of the Select Tribute character interaction for a Hegemonic Tributary]

Once you’ve decided what kind of tribute you’re offering, you set off on a journey towards your Suzerain's capital! Upon arrival, you are greeted by the Suzerain (if they have a Royal Court, you are received at the Court), where you exchange gifts. First, the Suzerain receives your gift, and you may attempt to influence what the reward will be - or you leave it up to the discretion of the Suzerain.

Similar to the type of tribute being offered, the type of reward the Suzerain may choose between vary depending on if you're a Mandala or the Emperor - a handful of options might be to:

• Award them with additional Trade Posts that increases the development of the Tributary's capital

• Award them with an artifact for them to bring back and display to their people

• Award them with a monk, to mend their heathen ways (for Mandalas to give to their tribal tributaries who are still unreformed)

You start traveling back home once you’ve received your reward, eager to showcase the gift and enjoy the legitimacy you received from your tribute. Now I will hand the word over to @lachek, who implemented the Hegemonic / Celestial Tributary types.

Hello again! @lachek here, and I'm excited to once more discuss Tributaries with you! As mentioned above, tributaries were first introduced into Crusader Kings III to support nomadic gameplay with Khans of the Steppe, where they modeled the unique subject-overlord relationship between a tributary and their suzerain. On the vast expanse of Northern Asia, nomadic tributary relationships were mostly held together through military domination, either implied or by actual display of force. Nomadic rulers can demand that neighboring realms fall in line under them by building up a sizable horde, or simply go out and enforce it through warfare. Through a cascade of such relationships, enormous swathes of the plains can be held together under a single suzerain. However, they can collapse just as quickly due to migratory patterns or a foreign conqueror cutting off a key part of the chain.

We also implemented a Subjugated Tributary type available outside the steppe to represent rulers dominated by more powerful neighbors and made to pay tax to their overlord.

However, none of those types adequately represent how tributary relationships functioned in either Southeast Asia or China. Therefore, we are introducing both Mandala tributaries and the Hegemonic/Celestial types (more on the distinction later), where the relationship is more contingent on one-sided respect and a gift economy.

These are realms within China's sphere of influence that recognize the Emperor as the Son of Heaven and pay him a great deal of personal respect (not to speak of material wealth). In return, they are granted recognition and sovereignty by China. Unlike tributaries on the steppe, this is not primarily a military arrangement but rather a one-sided show of deference, ultimately serving both parties in the end.

This relationship can be established by either party through character interaction, but is typically initiated by the prospective tributary themselves. Once established, the tributary has few immediate obligations: a little bit of Prestige and perhaps some Gold, in exchange for which some of China's Legitimacy is conferred upon them. It's usually a beneficial arrangement for both parties, especially since any taxes paid by the tributary goes directly into the Emperor's personal coffers rather than into the treasury. This makes it one of the few sources of direct income the Emperor has available for his own discretionary projects. Over time, the Emperor may decide to impose further standing obligations on some of their tributaries. Any increase in taxation or prestige transfer also comes with closer ties to China, however, thereby increasing legitimacy for the subject.

However, Celestial Tributaries are also expected to Kowtow to the Son of Heaven on a regular basis, bringing immense riches and gifts with them to reaffirm their deference and respect. This is fundamentally the same kind of Tribute Mission as in Mandala realms, with a few modifications. Unlike in Mandala realms, the Chinese Emperor always has some minimum expectation regarding the size of tribute, depending on the esteem in which the tributary is already held. This is tracked by a metric we call Imperial Grace, which serves several purposes:

• It acts as a timer on how frequently you are expected to pay tribute; if you're only able to bring the bare necessities and wait until the last moment to reaffirm your respect, the Emperor might start to demand more frequent visits. Highly successful missions give you a longer grace period until your presence is once again expected.

• It gives you an opportunity to adjust your relationship depending on what kind of tributary you want to be. Do you pay only nominal respect when absolutely required, just so China will overlook you when assessing their borders? Or are you a devoted subject looking for a closer relationship?

• The decay rate of Imperial Grace increases during unstable periods of the Dynastic Cycle, reflecting the uncertainty of these times. Will you contribute to sustaining the ruling dynasty of China's legitimacy during troubles times, or seize on this moment to break the agreement and try to claim a piece of the pie for yourself?

• As a Celestial Tributary you can quite readily adjust your own tributary contract's obligations, but changing it in your favor costs an amount of Imperial Grace.

Finally, at very high levels of Imperial Grace, the Emperor might decide to make China's relationship with its subject more permanent through the granting of a Seal of Investiture. This is an enduring artifact (regalia type, which can be reforged into a court artifact if you wish) that gives access to special privileges not usually available to subjects of China.

Trade Access: This privilege grants the tributary access to the domestic markets of the Chinese capital, resulting in a gradual closing of the development gap between the two realms' capital provinces. A low-development tributary enjoying this privilege could potentially propel itself to wealth and power compared to their less privileged neighbors within a few generations.

Family Access: This privilege negates the usual high acceptance maluses for marrying into the Chinese imperial dynasty, and even grants a small bonus to such dynastic intermingling.

Palace Access: This privilege lets the tributary's representatives roam the palace grounds, rubbing shoulders with ministers, governors, and sages in the seat of power. Tributaries with this privilege become active participants in the Dynastic Cycle and can join political movements to shape the future of China.

Once you have gained a Seal of Investiture, these become available as new contract privileges that you can activate in exchange for a one-time cost of Imperial Grace. This doesn't make the tribute missions redundant, however. The size of the bonuses you get from these scales with the degree of Imperial Grace you currently possess, so sustained tribute will only make your relationship with China more powerful.

It is important to note that a Celestial Tributary contract is a formal agreement between a realm and the Chinese Emperor. The contract is inherited upon death of either the tributary or the suzerain, but if the Hegemony title is lost then the contract will break -- even if another claimant dynasty later restores it. As long as the dynastic line is unbroken, however, accumulated Imperial Grace and the privileges that the contract yields can be maintained for centuries.

You may have noted I’ve made a distinction between Hegemonic and Celestial Tributaries above. A Celestial Tributary is a type of Hegemonic Tributary, specific to China. However, other hegemony titles (e.g. India or restored Rome) can also maintain Hegemonic Tributaries that share many similarities with Celestial ones. Instead of Imperial Grace these contracts have Subject Standing. They do not use the Seal of Investiture mechanic with its tie-ins to China-specific mechanics like difficult dynastic intermarriage or the Dynastic Cycle situation, but most other aspects of the contract work in similar ways with the same dynamics. This allows Hegemony-tier titles to use the tributary mechanic not only to expand their own de facto tracts of land, but also to accept recognition and deference from select surrounding realms they find useful to their larger strategy.

I'll conclude this with a final note to modders. The Hegemonic/Celestial variants of tributary types now marks five distinct types I've implemented in Crusader Kings II (with Mandala tributaries being a sixth variant in All Under Heaven's release). I'm continually amazed at how flexible this system truly is in allowing you to model different types of relationships between realms that look nothing like a feudal liege/vassal system.

Anything from simple non-aggression between two specific rulers to long-standing extractive domination is possible, with the one caveat that it must always have an implied power imbalance. With the addition of Subject Standing, which tracks relationship strength over time and can theoretically be applied to any subject contract (including your typical vassal contracts, if so desired), there's a lot of fertile ground to represent entirely novel types in your own mods, be they focused on more granular historical accuracy or total conversions. So go wild!

And here we are handing the microphone back to @Trin Tragula, who will have another look at the map.

---

As we did last time, we will conclude with a short overview of the map area relevant to this diary. Southeast Asia looks rather different in 867, 1066, and 1178, so for this I will be using a mix. If you are curious about anything in particular that I have not shown off feel free to ask us in the comments.
Like everything else shown in this diary, this is a work in progress, but we would love to hear your feedback on the things we’ve covered so far.

\[Faiths 867]

As was mentioned in the introduction, Southeast Asia has quite a complex mix of faiths and religions. We have tried to represent a reasonable amount of this variety, while also generalizing to avoid having overly small micro-faiths at the start.

Already by 867, Hinduism and Buddhism in various forms are dominant in large parts of this map, but older indigenous faiths are also present both on the mainland and the islands.

When it comes to cultures, the region is even more diverse in many ways. Notably, the Tai peoples are still found mostly in its northern parts. Historically, offshoots from this group would come to be politically dominant in many parts of the mainland, from modern Laos and Thailand, to Assam in northern India (the area labeled “Kamrupi” on this map).

Striking a balance between having too many or too few cultures from a gameplay point of view is never easy, but in this part of the world it is perhaps particularly hard. What we show here is both more simplified and more balkanized than we usually aim for.

This is a screenshot of the political situation in 1066, with the Song empire looming over the region in the north. The Srivijaya Empire (which was alive and well in the initial screenshot at the beginning of this diary) has been shattered by a relatively recent Chola invasion from India.

A quick overview of the Duchy mapmode. Many of these are not yet created on game start, as small realms prevail in Southeast Asia. Where other regions have a number of powerful dukes under their Kings, this region often sees duchies divided up between individual tributaries instead.

\[De jure kingdoms in 867.]

Last but not least, these are our de jure empires for the region! Nusantara may look big, but in terms of counties, it is not actually as enormous as it might seem. Not all parts of these islands are places with established states (i.e., counties) and the inland can often be impassable in places like Borneo or Papua.

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That was all we had this time! This diary is also the last one before our summer break, but dev diaries will resume in early August. Until then we will of course still be attentive to the feedback you have provided to our diaries so far (including this one).

Studio Black is exploring concepts for what comes after Chapter IV, and we want your input to help guide the way forward! Shape the future of the game by taking a short survey about your preferences, expectations, and concerns around potential new mechanics for Crusader Kings III.

Player feedback plays a key role in what comes next for Crusader Kings III; by sharing your thoughts, we can identify which features resonate most with our players and what kinds of experiences players are seeking in our game. Your responses to this survey will have a direct impact on our design decisions by ensuring that the content we're making meets your expectations, so please fill out the survey via this link.

Hey, I’m Chop, a designer working on the upcoming All Under Heaven expansion, particularly Japan and Korea. Speaking of which, in today’s development diary we will be exploring the Japanese archipelago and Korean peninsula! Let’s take a closer look at the gameplay mechanics of three new government types: Ritsuryō, Sōryō, and Meritocratic.

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The Japanese islands occupy an interesting position, being near enough to China to have been heavily influenced by its culture, but remote enough to have largely escaped direct interference from its Hegemons. Expanding to eventually cover the southern islands of Kyūshū and Shikoku, and most of the main island of Honshū, the Yamato people occupy most of the archipelago united under a single emperor, and with no real external threats.

However, the northern reaches of Honshū are populated by the Emishi tribes, further north the Ainu tribes reside on the island of Hokkaidō, and far to the south the island chains of Okinawa and Amami are home to the Ryukyuan tribes. Famed horse archers, the Emishi have long struggled against encroachment from their southern neighbors, who have launched incremental campaigns of conquest for centuries.

\[The Japanese political map, note coats of arms are work in progress]

Eagle-eyed diary readers will notice that Japan is no longer red, instead taking the Murasaki purple of the wisteria flower, to add some visual distinction from Chinese Hegemons of the crimson variety.

During our period, Japan transitioned from a peaceful bureaucratic realm headed by aristocratic families, to a military shogunate dominated by more pragmatic samurai families, but is still a largely unwarlike place, far from the more militarized Japan of the later Sengoku era.

Amidst all this, there is also a ruling emperor, or Ten’nō, who is nominally the head of state, but whose power varies considerably depending on the circumstances. The Yamato dynasty has held this position in an unbroken line from ancient times, even up to the present day.

\[The government split inside Japan at the 1066 bookmark.]

We strived to represent both of these styles of governments, as well the transition between them, along with the ever-present imperial family.

In our earlier start dates, the Heian (Peace) era is in full-swing, following Emperor Kanmu’s establishment of the aptly named capital of Heian-kyō (now Kyōto) in 794. This bustling city’s palace is the center of the government bureaucracy and home of the imperial family, with the Manors of the aristocratic families close at hand.

Taking inspiration from China, Ritsuryō is the Japanese legal framework, and as in China, the many provinces of Japan are assigned to governors, or kokushi. Along with the many branches of the Fujiwara family, the other aristocratic families of note compete for appointments and recognition.

Unlike China, the government is de facto directed by a regent ruling on behalf of the sitting emperor. For gameplay purposes, we have simplified the naming distinction between regents of underage emperors, Sesshō, and those of adult emperors, under the unified name Kampaku. Though nominally a regent, the Kampaku is not in a Diarch relationship with the emperor, and both characters may have their own Diarch when relevant.

Historically the position of regent was totally dominated by the main line of the Fujiwara family, who tried to minimize the influence of the imperial family beyond their ceremonial roles and maintain their pre-eminence among nobility. The Fujiwaras were an extremely prolific family, whose influence and sheer size essentially dwarfed those of any other family, with almost 500 living members in 1178. Playing as another bureaucratic family attempting to unseat the Fujiwaras is a great challenge in itself, though not impossible.

\[Example of Kampaku succession score]

Becoming Kampaku works similarly to the Acclamation succession of Byzantium, and can be directly raised or lowered by spending Influence, but also has a unique system of specific weights related to the imperial family, and Blocs (which we will discuss more below).

\[The Japanese province map]

Also unlike China or other administrative government types in the game, provinces are largely county tier appointments, and generally a governor cannot hold more than one at the same time. This represents the historic Ritsuryō provinces, or kuni, of Japan, and the fragmented power of any one official. Almost all historical kuni are represented as counties in-game, except for a few exceptions which were deemed too small and incorporated into a neighbour, such as Iga, Shima, and Awa (in Chiba).

By default, Ritsuryō rulers cannot create duchies or kingdoms in Japan, even the Kampaku. Shrewd Houses may instead fill many appointments with their own members, leveraging their power as a united family rather than as individuals, a theme common in our Japanese features.

\[The Japanese Manor domicile, art is work in progress]

The Manor is a new type of domicile, unique to Japanese governments, with its own buildings, art, and bonuses. Sōryō (more on that shortly) is our only non-administrative government type that grants an estate-style domicile, retaining any upgrades when switching between the Japanese government types. Some building chains are only unlocked by certain House Aspirations, which will be discussed more later.

Though historically the emperor was largely sidelined, the Yamato family was still an influential political force. Over time, it became common for emperors to become monks, abdicating the throne to their heir to escape the direct responsibilities of the throne, while still influencing politics as a so-called cloistered emperor, or Hōō.

In All Under Heaven, the emperor is a playable character, a member of the Yamato family who holds a Noble Family and Manor like other Ritsuryō rulers, and has their own Royal Court. The emperor is only a valid candidate for the regency of Japan itself, while other members of the Yamato family are valid candidates only for governorships.

\[The Emperor of Japan, note art is still WIP]

If an emperor does manage to take the top title by Influence, they will receive an event where they are given the option to abdicate and rule Japan as a powerful cloistered emperor, or attempt to hold on to both titles, representing the historical possibility of renewed direct rule, though doing so will not be well received by the chattering classes.

Historically, many branches of the Yamato family were eventually disinherited to prune the royal ranks, taking new names, the most famous being the various Taira and Minamoto houses, identified by which emperor they descend from. In our game, Yamato governors can form or join these houses, organically creating new branch families.

The sitting top liege of Japan, be they Kampaku, Shōgun, or Ten’no, always has access to a unique law category, Imperial Policies, issued in the name of the emperor. Despite the relative political stability, the policies of the Japanese government varied substantially throughout our era, as the bureaucracy was replaced and external politics changed. Like Crown Authority, Imperial Policies can be changed freely besides a cooldown.

There are a variety of available policies, suited to different objectives and situations, some with wide-reaching edicts which can substantially change the gameplay in the Japanese islands. For example, rulers in the empire of Japan are not able to freely declare external wars, representing the general lack of ambition for conquest besides extending the northern frontier for most of our period. However, by implementing the Imperial Expansion policy, the usual inter-realm casus bellis available elsewhere may be unlocked, along with a reduction to the cost of Mercenaries and Men-at-Arms.

\[The Imperial Policies law window, art and vassal approval requirements are work in progress!]

Other Policies change the balance between government types in Japan, or provide simple situational benefits at an opportunity cost.

Conversely, if Japan finds itself under true threat from an external invasion, the Defence Mobilization policy will become available, providing an extra edge in Advantage and allowing Ritusryo rulers access to the usually Sōryō-limited Mounted Samurai horse archer Men-at-Arms.

Each House in Japan has an Aspiration, similar to the House Powers of Byzantium, representing the character and goals of the family as a whole. Each Aspiration has several Levels, each granting new boons. The House Head may spend Prestige to increase the Level of their current Aspiration or change its Type, starting from the lowest Level once again when changing Type.

\[The House Aspiration window, art very much work in progress!]

Each type of Aspiration is focused on a different area, with some more suited to certain government types than other; Service grants bonuses to Governor Efficiency and Candidate Score, and is a good pick for those who wish to climb the bureaucratic ranks and serve emperor; Ceremony grants bonuses to Prestige and Renown generation, a sure choice for the noblest of families; Strength improves Men-at-Arms and martial skill, ensuring dominance on the battlefield.

Beyond the bonuses granted, the Aspiration a House chooses will also determine their political goals to a certain extent, and is a driving force in another new feature, House Blocs, which I will touch on a little later.

Our free patch accompanying All Under Heaven includes another family-oriented mechanic, the House Relation. These work similar to character relations like Rivals and Friends, but are between two Houses rather than two Characters.

Now, whenever a friendly or hostile action is taken between Houses within the same Realm or similar rank, such as declaring wars or arranging marriages, the Relation between the two Houses will increase or decrease.

\[Example of a House Relation and the levels, art work in progress!]

There is a spectrum of 7 levels, from Feud to Amity, with each rank towards the extremes modifying the Opinion of all House members to members of the other House. In addition, each level grants other bonuses or modifiers to standard gameplay when interacting with the other House, such as allowing the free negotiation of Alliances, or reducing the costs of all Wars.

\[Work-in-progress image of the work-in-progress House Relation history window. It's a work in progress.]

This change allows inter-generational disputes and collaborations between families to persist more organically, adding another layer of reactivity to the world. Like Character Memories, the reasons for changes over time are tracked, and can be similarly browsed to get a picture of how a relationship has developed over time.

With the fragmented political map inside Japan, we wanted a better way to depict the various political groups, and a way to allow them to defend each other without traditional Alliances, maintaining the fragile peace that so often prevailed.

House Blocs are our solution, and work similarly to the Confederations added in Khans of the Steppe, but with Houses as members rather than Characters. A Leading House acts as the main decision-maker of the Bloc, with other Houses considered to be their willing cooperators.  The House Head of the Leading House gets to decide which Houses are allowed entry to the Bloc, and may also expel other member Houses at will.

\[The House Bloc window, still very work in progress]

Each House Bloc has a Cohesion value, with additional bonuses for all members unlocked for keeping this value high. Cohesion is based on the number and governments of member Houses, whether their House Aspiration matches that of the Leading House, and the Relations between its member Houses.

The Aspiration of the Leading House acts as a sort of defining principle of the Bloc; a Service orientated Bloc will naturally represent Ritsuryō interests, while a Strength focused Bloc seeks to expand military power. The Aspiration of a House is not generally limited by their government type, and various combinations are possible. Generally multiple Blocs led by Houses of the same Aspiration type are not common, with interests coalescing around the most able leadership.

Crucially, Bloc members will automatically join the Factions of the House Head of their Bloc’s Leading House, increase their succession score for Kampaku (if they are Ritsuryō), and also join in their defensive wars, including Tyranny wars started by attempts at Imprisonment or Revocation. This makes challenging a Bloc something to consider carefully, and any wars that do occur are far more impactful than they would be if Japanese vassals were merely isolated county-tier rulers with scattered alliances.

In addition, acquiring governorships for members of Houses within your Bloc, be they your own or others, can directly aid in strengthening your Factions and succession score or preventing attacks to your position, while being without a Bloc leaves you worryingly exposed to your enemies.

As the Heian era wore on, many noble families, frustrated by the fierce competition for appointments with the Fujiwara, despaired of ever climbing the bureaucratic ranks, and instead left the capital, establishing manors in the provinces. Far from the disinterested aristocrats of the capital, the power of these families eventually grew to the point they ruled de facto as a hereditary local nobility.

We represent this by allowing Ritsuryō rulers to establish a held appointment as a fief, switching their government type to Sōryō. This is considered a crime by the Kampaku, and all Ritsuryō governors are able to use a casus belli which returns the title. However, Sōryō rulers pack more of a punch than the bureaucrats, with access to the Mounted Samurai horse archer Men-at-Arms type. In addition, Sōryō rulers will generally band together to defend themselves, making resisting their spread a less simple proposition.

By our last start date almost all of Japan was effectively beyond the reach of the Ritsuryō apparatus, instead now dominated by the rising bushi families, most notably the Taira and Minamoto houses.

\[The political situation of Japan in 1178]

By 1178, the head of the Kanmu Taira, Kiyomori, had effectively supplanted the power of the Fujiwara, ruling as a de facto dictator in a manner which would ultimately come to be known as a Shōgun. Just two years after our last bookmark, the Minamoto houses resisted the overwhelming Taira domination in the Genpei, or Minamoto-Taira, war, with their leader Yoritomo ultimately wiping out the Taira and establishing the first true shogunate in Kamakura.

---

Like Japan, the Korean peninsula occupies an interesting position as a heavily Chinese-influenced region, with its own deep cultural and political history. Though it is at greater exposure to invasion from the various states and tribes which lay to its north, it is a fairly developed mountainous region, and any threats will struggle to gain a foothold as long as Korea remains united.

\[Kingdom of Goryeo in 1066, character art, coats of arms, and map are work in progress]

By our earliest start date, the Gim dynasty of the Unified Kingdom of Silla in the east had long-subdued its main rivals, the kingdoms of Baekje in the south and Goguryeo in the north-west. The struggle between these three states, known as the Later Three Kingdoms or Husamguk, had raged for centuries, with Silla ultimately emerging victorious. Further north, the kingdom of Balhae, or Bóhǎi, straddles the hinterland between China, Korea, and the Jurchen tribes.

However, this status quo would not last long; a resurgent Goguryeo aristocracy under the Wang dynasty would ultimately overthrow Silla, establishing the Unified Kingdom of Goryeo based in Gaeseong, ruling the entire peninsula until the establishment of the Joseon dynasty in the late 14th century. Meanwhile, soon after Silla fell, Balhae was conquered by Khitan nomads, who would later establish the Chinese-influenced state of Great Liao.

\[Unified Silla in 867 and the Unite the Husamguk decision, art is work in progress]

We represent the unification of the Later Three Kingdoms via a special decision, Unify the Husamguk, which can be taken by any ruler who holds at least one of the kingdoms and has taken over the entire peninsula in a dominant position. This decision destroys the old kingdom titles and creates an empire-tier Unified Kingdom title, which may be named Samhan or Goryeo based on the culture of the unifier. This is the only way for a Korean culture ruler to form the Korean empire-tier title.

This decision also creates the Yongsun Throne, a special Primogeniture kingdom-tier titular title similar to the Chrysanthemum Throne of Japan. The name of this title may also vary based on the culture of the decision taker, with Yongsun, or Dragon, deriving from the legend of King Taejo the Great’s draconic heritage, the historical founder of Goryeo. In addition, the decision increases cultural acceptance between your culture and the other Korean cultures, making it easier to create a new Hybridized Korean culture, uniting the Silla, Baekje, and Goguryeo peoples.

\[Screenshot of the Unified Kingdom of Goryeo in 1178, art and map are work in progress]

The new Unified Kingdom title also gains a unique Acclamation-style succession law, which is weighted towards the ruling Yongsun Throne dynasty. This leaves open the historical possibility of a powerful family taking control of the state from the royalty, as happened by our latest start date with the rise of the military dictators, or Banju, beginning with Yi Ui-bang and Jeong Jung-bu, leaving the royal Wang dynasty in a ceremonial position similar to the Yamato family.

Along with the Korean kingdoms, the kingdoms of Dai Viet, Balhae, and the Liao and Jin states will use a form of government similar to the Chinese Celestial Government, known as Meritocratic. This government type represents the largely administrative states heavily influenced by China due to proximity, interference, or their aspiration to claim the Mandate of Heaven as a conqueror.

\[Map of governments in East Asia in 1178]

Meritocratic governments retain the Noble Families, Estates, Merit, and Examinations of the Celestial government type, promoting their bureaucrats to governorships via a similar system, but may not hold Imperial Examinations of the highest tier. When other forms of government transition into administrative via decision, if they are near to Celestial China they tend to adopt Meritocratic rather than the standard Administrative type.

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Let’s conclude with a little look at the current map, all of which is of course subject to change based on feedback and should be taken with a pinch of salt. Let’s start with the de jure title structures of the far east.

\[De jure Empire mapmode]

As you can see, Japan does not have de jure rights to the north of Honshū at game start, given the ongoing campaigns against the Emishi tribes and that part of Japan being the least integrated into the bureaucracy. Instead the kingdom of Hitakami, or Michinoku if ruled by Japan, is a de jure part of the empire of Amur, along with the islands of Sahaliyan and Hokkaidō in the kingdom of Aynumosir. On the mainland, the empire of Samhan, or Goryeo, is bordered by the empire of Andong, composed of Balhae and its environs.

\[De jure Kingdom mapmode]

Here we can see the internal kingdoms of Japan, made up of Tsukushi covering the island of Kyūshū, Yamato covering western Honshū and Shikoku, and Azuma covering most of eastern Honshū. On the mainland, Samhan is divided between its three constituent kingdoms of Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla.

\[De jure Duchy mapmode]

As for duchies, Japan is split into regional administrative divisions based on the Gokishichidō circuits. As Ritsuryō rulers cannot create duchies, they will mostly be formed by powerful Sōryō lords, who will use their House names. The duchies of Samhan are based on the Mok administrative divisions of the kingdom of Goryeo. To the north, Balhae is split into its administrative divisions, while other areas are based on the dominant tribes of those areas.

\[Culture mapmode in 867]

Our cultures are still a work in progress, but broadly Japan is mostly united under the Yamato culture, while the cultures of Korea’s Later Three Kingdoms are yet to be united in the Goryeo culture present by 1066. To the north, the Balhae culture is a hybrid of Goguryeo and Mohe.

Our faith map is about to undergo a large overhaul, so I will hold off on that one this week!

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That wraps up our topics for today, I hope you enjoyed this early look at Japan and Korea. Your thoughts and feedback are most welcome and I’ll do my best to answer your questions.

Ladies and Gentlemen! My name is Uber, modder and co-organizer for ModCon. Paradox has kindly granted us the use of their heralds to spread the word about our great festival!

PDX ModCon is the community owned and organised three-day showcase and celebration of Paradox mods; specifically those of Crusader Kings III, Imperator: Rome and Victoria 3. Over several live streams on YouTube we'll be presenting new trailers and showcases for over 40 mods. We have everything from updates to established mods like After the End and Princes of Darkness, to the introduction of new projects small and large.

Besides that we will have live interviews with several mod teams, giveaways, and discussions with some of our community about mod-adjacent subjects. And throughout the event we will be gathering money for the cause that all of our games owe to: the monuments of the world. The World Monuments Fund has been working for sixty years to preserve, protect and rebuild the physical cultural heritage that we all benefit from. Whether that be rebuilding a Yazidi shrine destroyed by conflicts, guiding sustainable tourism to Khmer temples, or setting up an authentic garden in the Palace of Versailles.

Join us, starting this Friday the 13th! For more information, visit the official ModCon website and join the Discord server.

Welcome to the third dev diary for our upcoming major expansion - All Under Heaven!

My name is Daan Broekhof, aka Joror, a programmer on the CK3 team, and also the “feature steward” for China. What does that title mean? Well, it roughly means I am responsible for design and coordination in this area, making sure that our initial vision gets translated into intriguing, immersive, and fun gameplay.

This Dev Diary is about the gameplay mechanics for China; we will be trying to get into as many details as we can about what we have developed so far. Because yes - the DLC is very much still being developed and being iterated on right now, and we want to hear your thoughts on what we have so far.

Since China is the biggest focus of this expansion, many others are working on it as well, some will chime in throughout this dev diary. Hold on to your hats - this is going to be a chonky one. 

(We might repeat some of the things revealed in the previous Dev Diaries #172 “The Full Medieval World” / #173 “The Map of China” - for clarity or cohesion; if anything seems contradictory please ask away and we will attempt to clarify!)

One key understanding of Imperial China in the medieval era is that it is a sophisticated bureaucracy. Organized and centralized in ways seen nowhere else in the world at this time. 

\[Default paper map of 1066, centered on the Song, showing English map names - exact map coloring, drawings, naming, borders, and translations still Work in Progress!]

\[Eastern paper map of 1066, centered on the Song, showing Chinese map names - exact map coloring, drawings, naming, borders, and translations still Work in Progress!]

It has many layers, ranging from the lowly district head to county magistrates, prefects, and provincial governors. Yet those are but the arms of the bureaucracy; in the central capital we have the heart of power: the central Ministers, the Grand Chancellor, and finally - the Emperor.

We want you, the player, to be able to rise up within this power structure, or perhaps even harder: challenge it from the inside - or the outside.

The government type for China is the Celestial Government - “Celestial” here is a reference to the Mandate of Heaven, the right to rule, held by the Emperor, who is also known as the Son of Heaven.

Unique to this government type is the way that titles under the Emperor (whose title is hereditary) are managed and distributed. Similarly to the existing Administrative Government type, these titles are given to the candidate who holds the highest score whenever such a title is vacated. 

In contrast to Byzantium, the scoring calculation in Celestial Governments is heavily dictated by the Merit Rank you hold. Your governmental accreditation level, if you will. You can still spend Influence, but you will not be able to obtain a higher position unless you have reached a sufficient Rank. Having reached a sufficient rank out of the nine ranks of merit will mean having access to (and being expected to fill) positions of a certain tier, with Prefectures (Counties), Provinces (Duchies) and Circuits (Kingdoms) requiring a higher and higher rank. The Duchy level does not usually exist this way in medieval China, but we add it here for gameplay reasons.

As you have seen in previous dev diaries, the Chinese map also has de jure empires, but these will generally not exist in a stable era. Instead the highest point in any career is the position of Minister, an Empire tier type of position that is covered in the following section.

Since China is so large, the Son of Heaven relies on his bureaucracy to fill vacant positions. While he can directly intervene if the situation requires, positions will generally be directly filled upon being vacated through this rank system instead of titles reverting to the Emperor, like they would in Byzantium.

Note: This feature is still in very active development, so is more likely to be changed, scaled up, or perhaps scaled down! 

「君之視臣如手足，則臣視君如腹心。」- 孟子

"If a ruler regards his ministers as his hands and feet, then his ministers will regard him as their heart and mind." - Book of Mencius, Li Lou II
(Part of the “Four Books”, which were the foundation of the Imperial Examination system during the Song Dynasty)

The central government of a Hegemony-tier Celestial Government is an impressive feat of bureaucracy, and where some say the true power of the Chinese Empire was found.

Throughout Chinese medieval history there were many Departments and Ministries that made up this central bureaucracy, and we’re opening up their leaders as titles and positions that players can vie for as the crown achievement of power in their civilian career! Only those with a very high Merit Rank will even be allowed to put their name forward.

These Department heads and Ministers will replace the regular Council of the Emperor, and they will work similarly but also differently to Councilors. First off, Ministers are not appointed by the Emperor directly when vacated. Instead, they also are filled by the same mechanics that select Governors for administrative vassal titles in the Empire. You can lobby to make yourself the next Minister of Revenue, but there might be many other powerful political entities competing for these titles.

The balance of power and the exact titles that existed for these varied during our time period. Generally speaking, the “Three Departments and Six Ministries” system existed from the Sui Dynasty (~580) to the Yuan Dynasty (~1271), and that is what we have taken as the main structure for the ministers. Additionally, we have selected two other powerful titles to be present: the Grand Chancellor and the Imperial Censor.

Mechanically, these positions will have landless titles of the Empire Rank, to signify their power under only the Emperor himself.

These positions will act as go-betweens between the governors and the Emperor, representing the delegated power of the Administration; the Emperor will often interact more directly with his ministers than specific governors, of which he has many.

Many interactions that usually would target your liege will instead target a minister in Imperial China!

One way for these Ministers (and the Grand Chancellor / Imperial Censor) to influence the state, is through Great Projects - which are collaborative projects that characters can start and others can contribute to. (More about this in a later Dev Diary!)
For example, the Minister of Works could start an infrastructure improvement project targeting multiple Circuits, or the Minister of War could start a great project to start preparing for a big military campaign.

Ministers will of course get funds - Treasury, and a salary to be effective administrators, which they can use to pursue projects or agendas.

\[Very initial work-in-progress view of the Grand Chancellor in the Council View]

Also called the “Prime Minister” or “Zai Xiang” 宰相, the Grand Chancellor is one of the most powerful political positions in Imperial China; they were the head of the entire civil administration and effectively served as the Emperor’s chief executive officer resulting in them often being seen as the highest-ranking official below the Emperor.

This title gives many powers, and in some situations is on an equivalent level to the Emperor. This title is also at the top of the Diarch Regency list, stepping in when the Emperor is unavailable.

\[Very initial work-in-progress view of the Imperial Censor in the Council View]

Leading an oversight institution called the Censorate, this role has the responsibility to investigate corruption, abuse of power, and nepotism. They also offer advice to the Emperor, and uniquely, they could challenge ministers, the Grand Chancellor, or even the Emperor himself.

This role is very similar to the Spymaster but lifted up even more in power by the ability to publicly challenge anyone in the bureaucracy, in both matters of illegal behavior but also moral behavior.

These roles are less powerful than the Grand Chancellor, but more powerful than any other official in the administration of Imperial China.

• Minister of Personnel

  • Oversees civil service appointments, evaluations, promotions and dismissals. 

• Minister of Revenue

  • Handles census data, taxation, land distribution, and state finances

• Minister of Rites

  • Manages state ceremonies, rituals, foreign relations (including tributaries), and the Imperial Examination system

• Minister of War

  • Directs military appointments, strategy, logistics and defence

• Minister of Justice

  • Administers laws, judicial review, prisons, and punishment

• Minister of Works

  • Oversees public worlds, construction, engineering and infrastructure

\[Very rough initial work-in-progress view of the Ministries in the Council View - yes they’re not very skilled, we know! Not all weights are in place yet]

The Emperor is not without power towards his ministers & top officials of course - he can even bestow the status of “Favored Minister” on any of them, granting them more Treasury to work with, and other benefits.

Similar to the Administrative system used in Byzantium and introduced in Roads to Power, the Celestial Government has “Province Types”; designations you can give titles (such as the kingdom sized Circuits) that specialize it for a specific purpose. In contrast to the Byzantine system, the number of each of these that you can have is often limited by the Circuit Type itself, the Dynastic Cycle Era, or specific Laws.

We have created two primary categories of Circuit Types: Civilian and Military. These correspond to the two career paths you can choose within the machinery of the Chinese state.

The main difference between these two categories is that the Civilian types will not have any Men-at-Arms, while the Military types will have (title bound) Men-at-Arms. When Civilian or Military governors need military assistance (for example from peasant uprisings, or worse), they can call in Military governors as allies in wars, usually requested via the Minister of War.

Different Circuit Types will also look different on your government “CV” - your Merit. Governing these titles will grant more or less Merit, depending on their tax base size, or size of armies.

Note: We’re still heavily tweaking the advantages and disadvantages of each of these Circuit Types! These values are not final and definitely will be tweaked.

\[Screenshot of the Chinese city holding background illustration]

This is the most common type within the Empire and designates an area that is governed primarily by civilian rule. It does not usually have access to personal Men-at-Arms, or Title-bound Men-at-Arms.

\[Tooltip of a Standard Administration circuit type - very basic, and values are placeholder]

An area of industry! Focused on production and long-term development. You can have only a limited amount of them active. It does not provide any Title Men-at-Arms.

\[Tooltip of an Industrial Administration circuit type - values are temporary and will change!]

A Circuit type which is focused on efficient administration of urban areas and urban development. It does not provide any Title Men-at-Arms. It can only be assigned when the Dynastic Cycle is in the Advancement Era, and is limited in number.

\[Tooltip of a Metropolitan Administration circuit type - values are temporary and will change!]

\[Screenshot of the Chinese castle holding background illustration]

This administration type focuses on raising and maintaining Title Men-at-Arms and military defensiveness. Development growth is hampered, and you can have only a limited amount of them. They would usually be set on border-circuits.

\[Tooltip of a Military Administration circuit type - values are temporary and will change!]

This circuit type is focused on creating a more independent military entity that could sustain and operate by itself. It can even independently expand its own realm on orders of the Emperor. It is only available if the Dynastic Cycle is in the Expansion Era, and is also limited in number.

Usually reserved for areas further away from the Chinese core lands.

\[Tooltip of a Protectorate Administration circuit type - values are temporary and will change!]

How do you prove that you would make a good Confucian ruler? Well, just like in the modern era, you have to take your exams! Exams are the way to get started on your career within Imperial China, and other realms that have copied the system from them. 

You also get to choose your career path type: Civilian or Military. This choice determines what type of positions in the Empire you will be considered for. The Civilian path usually starts by obtaining a Civilian governorship at a low title tier, and goes all the way up to the Grand Chancellor, the right hand man of the Emperor.

The Military path will see you sent off to defend the borders of the Empire, first in Military governorships, and later perhaps coming to the capital as the Minister of War. The Military path is also one where you will be commanded by the Emperor to wage wars or campaigns on their behalf.

We have taken the traditional Chinese 9-rank system for Merit - which results in a reverse of the usual numbering, going from Rank 9 (starting rank) to Rank 1 (best rank).

Historically in Imperial China, there was a Candidacy Grade (資品), which was used for exams, and the Service Grade (官品), which was used when in office. We have combined the two for simplicity.

\[Merit Rank of a highly successful Governor, with placeholder icons to show which examination types have been successfully completed]

Hi, I’m Axel, or PinkAxelotl, and I am one of the designers working on Examinations.

As previously mentioned, Merit is key to securing government office. A character’s Merit score indicates how appropriate they are as an official in Meritorious East Asian administrative government types. It represents their documented achievements and moral conduct according to Confucian ideals. An official with a high Merit Level has a higher candidate score and (if employed) a higher salary. Characters who are not yet employed as governors can attempt to increase their merit by attending examinations.

The rank of merit also directly corresponds to how high a position a character can hold.

\[Screenshot of the Imperial Examination activity in progress]

The examinations can be taken from the age of six via the Children’s Examination. You can set your children up for success by having them take the test, which increases their likelihood of attending higher level examinations. Next is the Provincial level, another local examination, represented in game as a multi-layered Decision. Successfully passing this test allows you to be considered for county-level appointments. More ambitious characters might set their sights on the prestigious higher-level examinations. The Imperial Examination is an in-game open activity hosted in the capital, it starts with the Metropolitan examination, from which the top ten entrants will move on to the exclusive Palace Examination, hosted by the Huangdi (Emperor) himself.

Apart from being generally gifted, being a good student of Confucius is important to secure a good score at the examinations.

In order to prepare, the obtaining and leveling of the Confucian Scholar trait can be achieved via studying at a university in China, or by finding a Confucian elder. More about elders and disciples later in this diary!

Lastly, there are also other ways to succeed if you are not very gifted or you do not trust that the time you spent studying the Confucian classics will be enough. There were Examinees that were known to try to bend the rules, if not outright cheat, by for instance trying to get to know their examinators in advance.

When playing inside of China you will hold a family estate - to be built up over generations as a place to call your home. In some ways this is similar to your family estate in the Administrative government form from Roads to Power. This is where you can invest in permanent things that will keep benefitting your family in future generations - unlike the governorship lands which you only improve on behalf of the emperor. Unlike in Byzantium there will also be a different focus for what kind of benefits you may want. As an example, while you cannot guarantee a high merit score for your children, you can ensure that in your estate they are well educated (tracked through the Confucian education trait) as they grow up so that they may do well in the examinations.

\[Screenshot of a simple Chinese family estate]

Another difference from the old domicile for administrative realms is that the things you can add to your family estate in a Celestial realm will depend on what titles and offices you currently hold. Some things you will only be able to build if you achieve specific things in your career, such as reaching the position of Minister in the central government.

Like many other things in the diary, the estate itself is still under development, and if you have suggestions for things you think we should cover here then please let us know!

In Imperial China, Governors do not “own” the territory they rule over; they govern on behalf of the central government, and by extension, the Emperor. The tax you levy is not yours, they are the Empire’s. You are not supposed to spend all that on building out your estate, or to have many fancy feasts. That would be corruption; and quite illegal!

In this organized state, taxes are instead sent to the central government, which sends back resources earmarked for government use: a budget. Governors would receive salaries, which they could spend as they please.

To represent this central flow of money, we have implemented a new “gold flow” that is used by the Celestial government: the Imperial Treasury system. It uses a new resource called Treasury.

\[Tooltip describing the Treasury resource]

It works as follows:

1. As a vassal in the Empire, all taxes you collect from your sub-vassals and domain are sent upward to your liege, and they will send it upward similarly, until it reaches the Emperor.  To contrast, Feudal Vassals send only a relative percentage up to their liege, and keep the rest.

2. The Emperor will convert a large percentage of this vassal income into Treasury, a new resource that represents liquid assets that are supposed to be spent only on governmental tasks and investments. Whatever the Emperor does not convert is added to the Emperor's own coffers of gold. (Treasury has a 1-to-1 relationship to Gold, if they ever are converted.)

3. Then the Emperor sends Treasury downward to all their governors (vassals), based on the taxes collected by each governor, plus any adjustments specific for the title they govern. Those vassals send down Treasury to their sub-vassals, etc. This could mean you might receive more Treasury from the central government than the taxes you were able to collect. For example, Military Governors in a Protectorate border circuit out in the barren desert might receive more, since they are paying for a sizable army.

At some point during the development of this system we created this flowchart, which I tweaked a bit for the Dev Diary! People like flowcharts, right?

\[Example flowchart presenting how Taxes flow up to the Top Liege, and Treasury flow down from there]

What can you spend Treasury on then? All official government business! In the Celestial Government this translates to: All holding buildings, Provincial Men-at-Arms regiment costs, levy upkeep, most Great Project contributions, a few Activities, and any salaries you have to pay to your sub-vassals.

Conversely, all the things that belong to you privately, are paid for with Gold: Estate Buildings, quite a few Activities, personal Men-at-Arms regiments, Schemes, a lot of Court Positions.
At any given moment, you can also put your own Gold into the Treasury of your primary title, but beware, you cannot take it out again as Gold!

Additionally, Treasury belongs to the primary title of the receiver - so if you were to lose that title, that Treasury would move away with it. 

So building up personal wealth is harder in a centralized system; you have your Estate, your Salary, and any other “shenanigans” to get Gold. Of course, there is also outright corruption - schemes and the like, and some shady Decisions. Whenever you or another governor of the Empire does so, the Dynastic Cycle slides more towards corruption.

We have rebalanced gold costs for various existing systems to better reflect that Circuit Governors aren’t actually as rich as Kings, even though they are the same title tier. 

The Emperor has a new Legitimacy Type - called the Mandate of Heaven, which has some additional triggers and expectations. It’s not always easy to receive the approval of the Heavens.

Should this Legitimacy be lower than expected, then the Mandate of Heaven is in doubt - and change is in the air.

As stated in our Vision Dev Diary, the Dynastic Cycle represents the ongoing cyclical nature of Dynasties and power within Imperial China.

\[In-development version of the Dynastic Cycle window, showing the currently active Era and Era Type]

The Dynastic Cycle is the tool we use to represent various different periods and ambitions of China in our game. The key periods that we want to be able to represent are:

• The Tang Dynasty - An expansionist China, with more powerful independent military governors

• The Five Dynasties & Ten Kingdoms Period - A divided China, where many states tried to claim the Mandate of Heaven, and re-unite China

• The Song Dynasty - An inward looking China, where Merit, innovation, prosperity, and scholarship were held in high regard

• The Yuan Dynasty - A China that was conquered by an outside force, which then tried to adopt and adapt the imperial system

• The Early Ming Dynasty - A stronger defensive China, where the Emperor held more power over the Government, with a revival of exams and cultural writings

Since we create an alternative history from the moment we unpause the game, we want these different Dynasties and their policies and politics to be able to organically form and evolve. To do this, we created a new Situation (a type of persistent geographically bounded system) called The Dynastic Cycle, which can be in one of several possible Eras (Situation Phases), that can represent both the cyclical nature, and different types of China that existed.

Additionally, this Situation gives China a mechanism that encourages it to be united again more easily under the Mandate of Heaven - because if we add a force that encourages a cyclical fall, it needs a counter component for a cyclical rise.

Historical Note: The Dynastic Cycle is a concept that was formalized during the period that CK3 represents - and its cyclical nature was discussed in depth. For example Zhu Xi (1130-1200), a scholar during the Southern Song Dynasty, argued that the Dynastic Decline was not inevitable, and that the loss of moral virtue and ethical discipline could be prevented - if there is a structured society led by scholars, who were guided by principle and moral clarity.

Each Era affects those within China in various significant ways. Aside from the usual modifiers on characters and counties, our aim is to also give each Era things that are unlocked by them, that are distinct and useful. 

These things can be: 

• Additional laws and policies that can be enacted

• New Province (Circuit) types

• New interactions towards others in China

• Great Projects that can change society/warfare/infrastructure significantly

• New Casus Belli

They can also take away some things to reflect a different nature of the realm, such as:

• Restricting certain types of Casus Belli

• Limiting or forbidding personal Men-at-Arms

For example, in the Expansion Era, the “Grand Expansionist Command” Army Command structure law option is available, which enables larger Title Men-at-Arms armies, at the cost of a heavy burden on the vassals of China. 

Disclaimer: Not all effects are shown in the screenshot; also all mechanics are not final and have not yet been balanced! 

\[Example of the Army Command Structure Law, where the last option is unlocked if you are in the Expansion Era]

Each Era is sorted into one of the three following categories, or types:

• Stable Era Type 

  • Each of these represent a prosperous age - the Empire is stable, and the Mandate of Heaven is strongly held. These Eras enable extra-specialized laws, activity options, and represent to a certain extent the stated ambition of the government and Emperor. If the Emperor does not fulfill the ambition set forward by the Stable Era, they will suffer catalysts that drive the Era to an Unstable Era. Stable Eras generally can transition only into Unstable Eras, and not into other Stable Eras directly.

• Unstable Era Type

  • Whenever the Mandate of Heaven is not strongly held, and the Empire is not operating at its peak, the Dynastic Cycle is considered to be in an Unstable Era type. These Eras signify that the cycle is turning downward, but it can still be turned around with a lot of effort. If you are an ambitious servant of the Empire and you think that you can fulfill the Mandate of Heaven better than the current Emperor - now might be the time to consider your options.

• Chaotic Era Type

  • Whenever the Mandate of Heaven is completely lost, the Empire is shattered, and the Dynastic Cycle is rotated to an Era full of uncertainty, wanton violence, regional independence, and potential.

In this Era, the Empire is focusing on improving itself by looking inward: through Innovations, cultural excellence, prosperity of the people, and good Meritorious Confucian governance.

Offensive wars are more limited, preferring instead to establish Tributaries and other relationships. Great Projects can be completed faster, with the focus of the Empire being directed inward. Imperial Exams can focus on producing the best Governors that the Empire has ever seen.

Historically the Northern Song period (960-1127) would be in this Era, and this is what China has at the 1066 start date. We also consider the Southern Song period (1127-1279) to be in this Era, even though they suffered a great loss of territory to the north, it is teetering on the edge of an Unstable Era. As such, this is also the Era active in our later start date - 1178.

Note: These effects are not final! We’re still tweaking here, especially around the limitations of Wars.

\[Screenshot with effects of the Advancement Era]

In this Era, the Empire is focusing on growing stronger through looking outward: pacifying frontiers, expanding its reach through military force, Tributaries, and the Silk Road.

The Empire has more tools in its belt to expand - new Casus Belli, more armies, the Imperial Exams can focus on generating great Military Strategists, and a specialized Protectorate Administration circuit type is unlocked.

On the flip side, there are some downsides to this Era: Vassals that are not Administrative might war among themselves, it is harder to integrate lands into an ever expanding Empire. Rebellions and unrest are more likely.

Historically the Early and High Tang periods (618-756) could be considered to be in this Era. The Early Ming period (1368-1424) could perhaps also be considered to be in this Era, until it turned more isolationist.

Note: These effects are not final! We’re still tweaking here, especially around the types of Wars.

\[Screenshot with effects of the Expansion Era]

The Mandate of Heaven is seen as wavering; either through corruption, popular unrest, foreign invasions, the Emperor acting against their own stated ambitions, non-Meritous behavior, or all of the above.

This is the general Era that China can be in when things are uncertain. The bureaucratic apparatus is stuttering - bringing in less taxes, corruption is easier to commit and more common, populist and peasant factions are more likely to express their discontent through violence. Distant parts of the Empire might drift away or even declare independence.

Historically, the Late Tang Era (756-907) could be considered to be in this Era, pushed into it by the massive An Lushan Rebellion. This means that our early start date 867 is in this Instability Era.

Note: These effects are not final! We are also considering creating a separate ‘Reform’ Unstable era to represent an Era willing entered into to reform from one Stable Era type to another; or might keep that concept included within this Era.

\[Screenshot with effects of the Instability Era]

The Mandate of Heaven has been taken by a force that is not inherently China. This Era is specifically triggered when the Hegemony of China title falls into the hands of someone who does not have the Celestial Government or a Cultural Heritage that is not Chinese. Their Government Type will become Celestial when the Title is taken, regardless.

This Era presents a time when the cultural cohesion of China is shaken, and with it, the Mandate of Heaven. This “foreign” Emperor can try to adopt and earn the Mandate of Heaven, and steer China into another Stable Era, or they can fall into a Chaotic Era where multiple forces strive for dominance.

A Conquest Dynasty like this is also able to exert an aggressive outward expansion, since that is what most likely got them here in the first place. Additionally, they can try and make their Culture dominant by preferring those of their own Culture to hold governorships.

Historically, the Yuan Dynasty period (1271-1294), which started when the Mongols under Kublai Khan conquered the majority of Southern Song, would be of this Era type.

Note: These effects are not final! We’re likely to add more rebellions/uprisings, and some other minuses similar to the Instability Era.

\[Screenshot with effects of the Conquest Era]

“The Empire, Long United, Must Divide.”

When this Era starts, the Hegemony of China title is destroyed, and all direct vassals of the Emperor become independent. Those ambitious enough can declare their own intent to claim the Mandate of Heaven and adopt a Dynastic name for their realm. The Celestial Government type is continued to be valid for these realms, but no true Emperor exists. The bureaucracy continues, but decentralized and less strong. Alliances are quickly drawn up between those sympathetic to one another or merely out of necessity.

Historically, the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period (907-960) would be in this Era. (If you start in the early start date of 867, when the Tang is in the Instability Era, you are very likely to end up here as well, if this is your cup of tea.)

\[Screenshot with effects of the Chaos Era]

What is Divided can be Re-united, however, through new Casus Belli that allow for wars to be plentiful; all in the name of the people and the Mandate of Heaven.

\[Screenshot with the “Consolidate Land Under The Heaven” Casus Belli]

If one ruler achieves to control 75% of the de-jure Hegemony of China title, they can Claim the Mandate of Heaven via a Decision, and start a new Imperial Dynasty! 

They will be able to select their Imperial Dynasty Name (if they have not done so already), and select one of the five Wuxing elements for their Dynasty, coloring China on the map in one of five possible colors.

A new Stable Era of their choosing is started, and the Dynastic Cycle turns once more!

We have talked about all the different Eras now, but haven’t really told you how they would flow into each other, and how you could influence this!

Similar to Struggles from our other DLCs, the Dynastic Cycle uses Catalysts - triggered events with specific point values - to push Eras from one to another. The Dynastic Cycle usually turns relatively slowly, and Eras might last a hundred years if you balance things right. 

The general flow of Era change is: Stable Era > Unstable Era > Chaotic Era > Stable Era > etc. There are some exceptions of course!

Unstable Eras can lead back to Stable Eras, if the tide is turned, but this generally speaking is not easy. Some Eras might trigger from circumstances; Conquest Eras specifically are usually triggered when a large war for the title of China is lost.

Catalysts come into play primarily in the Stable and Unstable Eras, and here are some examples from the Advancement Era towards the Instability Era.

Some Catalysts are immediate triggers for a new Era because of their weight:

• The Hegemon loses the Mandate of Heaven - their Legitimacy is at rank zero

• A new House inherits the Hegemony title

One-off Catalysts are things that you can cause yourself:

• The Hegemon loses a War

• The Imperial Capital is Raided or Besieged

• An Imperial House member is murdered

• A Governor embezzles from the central government

Others are more symptoms of corruption and/or incompetence:

• The Imperial Treasury is empty

• The Hegemon appoints a Low Merit Councillor (/Minister)

• Failing to hold Imperial Exams

Yet others are political in nature - an opposing Movement is strong

• Yearly Drift: The Expansion Movement has the most Movement Power

Our intent with these Catalysts is to give players more tools to directly start or stop catalysts from happening, so that even though the Eras might change slowly, inevitably, you can help things along or delay them significantly.

Note: These catalysts are still very much under development, we’re very likely to remove/add/rebalance many of them!

\

[/i][/p]
Political Movements

Hi, I’m Arkadiusz, or @PDS_Arky, and I am one of the designers working on the Dynastic Cycle and China. One of the new mechanics I’ve been responsible for is the Political Movements in China.

Unlike in Byzantium, Chinese Governors can share values that transcend their personal goals. Using the Situation Participant Group feature we’ve created 4 distinct political movements in the Dynastic Cycle Situation:

• Pro-dynasty - Characters in this group support the Emperor in everything,

• Expansion - They want to change the Dynastic Cycle to the Expansion Era,

• Advancement - They want to change the Dynastic Cycle to the Advancement Era,

• Conservative - This movement seeks to resist reform, instill a moral hierarchical order, and empower scholar-official elites.

There is also an Unaligned group that doesn't have any unique mechanics and doesn't represent any values, but its members are susceptible to being persuaded to join other Movements.

In history, during the Song Dynasty, the notable reformer Wang Anshi would be the leader of the Advancement Movement (“Reformers”), and Sima Guang leader of the Conservative Movement. They would debate policy before the Emperor, eventually leading to the implementation of Wang Anshi’s “New Policies”. These two Movements would clash for over 40 years in “ethical factionalism” with ruthless purges of each other.



\[Screenshot of Political Movements in Dynastic Cycle UI]

Each movement is affected by the Dynastic Cycle Eras in a different way, through character modifiers and unique unlocks. Movements will support their members by using friendly interactions and schemes between each other (and hostile against other movements), and have access to unique interactions, decisions, etc. or unique options inside them. Some of those will trigger a catalyst that will move the Dynastic Cycle in a certain direction. When in Stability, catalysts will push towards Instability, while in Instability they can either push to Chaos or back to Stability.



\[Screenshot of interactions available towards a member of a different Movement]

Each movement has a Leader. A Movement Leader has access to the Emperor and can issue a unique petition via decision to further their movements goals or help fellow members. In order to become a leader, you have to prove yourself in front of other members and defeat the current leader in a political debate. As a Leader you can engage in another type of Debate in front of the Emperor to win Imperial favor, leading to your Movement becoming Empowered, granting it more powers to grow the Movement and change the Dynastic Cycle Eras.



\[Screenshot with Make Movement’s Petition Decision by Movement Leader]

The Movement’s clout is expressed in a Movement Power value, which is a collection of Personal Movement Powers of all its members. There are various ways to increase the power, some permanent (gaining merit, governor trait experience, age) while others temporary (political schemes, military strength, disciples).



\[Screenshot with list of Expansion Movement members and tooltip over Personal Movement Power]



\[Screenshot with Movement Power game concept tooltip]

We have also added a new type of relation: Elder and Disciple, to further highlight the social connections and hierarchy. The relation is tied to Merit; a Disciple needs to have less Merit than the Elder, otherwise the relation cannot be established or ends amicably. Two main ways of acquiring Disciples is to convince them to join your Movement or mentor them directly through a new political scheme. Disciples also lend their Movement Power to the Elder.



\[Screenshot with Disciples relation in Character window and Disciple game concept tooltip]



\[Screenshot with Request Mentorship interaction showcasing a character becoming a Disciple]

In the Chaos Era, the Movements disband, but the relation prevails. The connections you made will help you keep the power base and quickly reestablish the Mandate of Heaven in your favor.

Movements will contest each other, and a wise Emperor will make sure that there is a balance between them, less they create a Movement with so much power it could operate the Empire without him.

And More To Come

We try to limit our dev diary size somewhat to not info-dump too much all at once, so we’ll keep it here for now… but I will post a little teaser here for more China-related mechanics that we handle in the near future:

• Hegemonic Tributaries - Tributaries that are formed when outside rulers acknowledge the Hegemony, and in turn receive recognition, economic benefits - and more.

• Great Projects - We did not mention the Great Wall or the Grand Canal, or other obviously Chinese great projects - but rest assured, we will get there

• Border Warfare - We are experimenting with allowing realms to wage war on sub-vassals of big realms in certain circumstances, without immediately drawing in the top liege. This gives larger empires like the Chinese Empire more local military delegation, and also a new type of threat.

Please let us know what you think of all of these features! Many are still work-in-progress, and the more we hear from you, the better we can adjust them. 🙏 

Our next Dev Diary will be about Japan, its territories, and various mechanics. See you all next time, and 谢啦, 祝你愉快! (Thank you, I wish you happiness!)
/Joror

Hello everyone! Today we're releasing a small update to resolve a stability issue in addition to some other issues.

This update should be fully compatible with existing saves, as well as most mods compatible with 1.16.

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• Fixed an issue that caused a random crash
  
• Added a fix for an issue with the 'Collect Taxes' landless adventurer contract, where you could be stuck in traveling mode after finishing the contract
  
• Fixed an issue that could prevent players from continuing their game after closing the succession window
  
• Fixed an issue that caused the default faith icon for a new custom faith to be catholic cross - default will now be the icon of the faith you’re branching out from
  
• Fixed an issue for settled Nomads where Obedience still was a factor in faction commitment
  
• The “Request incursion” interaction now also considers Nomadic Turkic tribes
  
• “Found a New Empire” decision also works for Nomadic rulers now

• Added missing localization for the new game difficulty rules that were introduced in 1.16.2.1

• We’ve exposed the trigger for fertility equilibrium and made it possible to set HERD_GAIN_FROM_COUNTY_MULTIPLIER to 0

Good day, everyone! I'm Cordelion, one of the many Game Designers currently working on All Under Heaven, and today I'm going to be taking you on a short tour of the geographical side of our upcoming expansion - specifically, China!

The following dev diaries will have a stronger mechanical focus, but since the map extension is essentially the foundation for this new expansion, we thought it best to give you the overview first to better familiarize everyone with where all the new action is taking place and how we’re approaching that. Something I want to make note of: we're currently experimenting with several aesthetic aspects of the map while also iterating on feedback we've received from our extremely helpful beta testers, as well as external partners and consultants, in order to ensure that our map expansion is as faithful to the period as possible and feels authentic to those whose history is being depicted.

Your thoughts and opinions are extremely welcome and will absolutely be taken into consideration as this process continues: we’re starting this dev diary cycle earlier than we have for past DLC in order to broaden the window available to integrate your feedback.

As a result of this, please be aware that what I'm about to share is a work in progress, and a great deal of what you're about to see is still very much subject to change, and will not necessarily be exactly what will appear in the expansion on release. I would have liked to have also been able to show you the distribution of faiths and cultures today, but they are not quite ready to be shown at this point, but we’ll be happy to give you a more detailed look in a future dev diary.

For those who might be unfamiliar with them, a map projection is essentially a way to reconcile the fact that the Earth is a sphere, but maps need to be able to be displayed in a flat, two-dimensional form. You may have heard of the Mercator projection, for example, to name one fairly widely known.


[Various map projection examples. Pick your least favorite and share it below!]

This inherently always results in distortion: there is no way around that. For this reason, there are many map projections in existence, each with differing degrees of distortion in different parts of the world. You can't avoid the distortion, you can only choose where it's distributed.

The map projection we used when originally making CK3 was a custom one, tailored to meet the limits of computer monitor’s standard resolution as well as the game's general needs at the time, which unfortunately did not include most of Asia. The projection is inherently imperfect: we adjusted it as best we could for All Under Heaven, but we can’t replace it entirely - at least not without starting over and remaking all of the game’s maps.

This will result in certain parts of the map, when compared to others, having a scale noticeably different than that of reality. The Chinese province of Shaanxi is, in reality, the size of Great Britain, but due to distortion and compression appears smaller in-game than the similarly-sized Korean peninsula, while eastern Siberia occupies significantly less of the game’s map than it would realistically.

We know that to many, these differences may stand out compared to what you might have expected: I just want to clarify that those differences are not because we preferred that it be this way, but rather to explain the process that produced them and why.

​
The Hegemony of China: the new highest tier of title available in the game and the only one extant on the game map at each of our start dates - although certain specific other hegemonies may be formed by decision after unifying similarly vast and expansive regions (such as the lands of the former Roman Empire and the Indian subcontinent) elsewhere. As for the unique mechanics of the hegemony itself, we’ll talk more about those in a future dev diary dedicated to the subject.



The name of the Chinese hegemony in our 867 start date is Tang. This is correct for the ninth century, but obviously not at all fitting for the eleventh and beyond. Something new we’re adding with All Under Heaven is the capacity to have a title’s name evolve over time - while still retaining its previous names in the title’s history, so you won’t have past Tang rulers being shown as if they were Song once the dynasty’s name changes.

As an extension of this, new ruling dynasties that rise to power in China will have the ability to take their name from a wide variety of historically-appropriate inspirations. Historically, new dynasties risen to power took their names not from their own family surnames, but would instead take the name of a past dynasty, or the name of an ancient state they felt they had a particular connection to. Emperor Gaozu, the founder of the Tang, had been awarded the title of Prince of Tang before he became emperor and founded his own dynasty, for example.

In addition to the formal renaming of the realm under new ownership, you will also have the ability to choose one of several potential colors to represent their title on the map. This harkens back to the practice of different dynasties assuming certain elemental virtues and thematically adopting the color associated with each element - yellow for earth, red for fire, black for water, azure for wood, and white for metal. The Song dynasty identified the virtue of fire as their guiding principle, and so red was their dynastic color.

​
The next step down is, of course, the empire tier - previously the highest tier achievable in the game, but no longer. The hegemony of China, as it is defined for this period, consists of five empires; Qin, Liang, Shu, Wu, and Yue, all names which echo repeatedly throughout Chinese history.



These empires are uncreated at game start, and exist as a step on your journey to claim the Hegemony of China after the previous dynasty’s collapse in a Chaotic Era (which is a phase of the Dynastic Cycle mentioned in the previous dev diary).

As with the hegemony itself, the names of these political entities can and will change when they are formed, so you could, for example, found the historical (albeit short-lived) Qi dynasty when forming the de jure empire of Liang as the Tang rebel Huang Chao.

At this tier, you’ll possess the dignity and many of the privileges of an imperial ruler, but your rule is not so widely accepted that you can claim to be the sole undisputed hegemon. You could make the claim, but there are enough others outside your borders powerful to call your invocation of Heaven’s favor into question. Similar to the hegemony, there is admittedly more to say about their specific components than these titles themselves, so we’ll discuss their distribution more in the next section.

​
And now it comes to the kingdom tier, and here we’ve had to be a bit more flexible in terms of our approach. While ample references exist for administrative jurisdictions at the historical equivalent of our county tier, the same is significantly less true at the kingdom tier. We can’t exactly do without them, however, nor do we wish to have them of wildly inconsistent sizes or degrees of game balance, as it is not unlikely that China will at some point fracture into these units.



As a result, the configuration at this tier is currently set up instead using a Song dynasty period administrative unit called a circuit, which historically was a bit more supervisory in nature and a little less hands on, but lines up reasonably well with the approximate size of many of our preexisting kingdoms, and gives the ducal tier player a higher layer of titles to which to aspire and pursue, even if they may not have been quite as prestigious a posting in time in which they existed.

We recognize that the Song system of circuits was fairly unique when compared against the administrations of other dynasties, but the Song’s existence spanning two of our three start dates makes its influence more natural to adopt than that of future dynasties, or those further in the past whose practices did not persist into this time.

There are some peripheral entities here worth making special mention of. The northern portion of what is modern day Vietnam was known as Annan in this period, nearing the end of around two centuries under Tang rule as its southernmost mainland province. In our later start dates you will see it appear instead as a neighboring state known as Đại Việt (Great Viet) under its own distinct ruling dynasty.

Similarly worthy of note is the Xia kingdom in the north, previously one of the easternmost regions of our map’s former borders. In the space of our three start dates, this region evolved from a semi-autonomous military regime within the Tang state into a self-proclaimed independent kingdom before being overrun by Tangut invaders, who declared the foundation of the state of Dà Xià (Great Xia), the product of an interesting mixture of Tangut, Han, Uyghur, and Tibetan influences that at one point managed to compel the Song dynasty to pay it tribute for a time.

Additionally, while we don’t have time to go into too much detail about them at the moment, special mention must be given of the Khitan-led Liao dynasty of the north, supplanted by the Jurchen Jin dynasty by 1178, which invaded and occupied much of northern China in a conflict that displaced millions of peasants and taking the emperor himself as a prisoner of war.

In All Under Heaven, both the Liao and Jin dynasties will mix Chinese administrative and bureaucratic practices of their imperial government with tribal and nomadic vassals whose traditions and inclinations may clash with the oft-Sinicizing ways of their rulers and those at court. Further worthy of note, historically the Jin themselves would eventually experience a dramatic reversal of fortune in the early 13th century at the hands of a nomadic chieftain named Genghis Khan, with whom some of you may already be familiar…

And, of course, this section would hardly be complete without mention of the Nanzhao kingdom in the southwest, which goes on to reincarnate as the state of Dàlǐ in our latter two bookmarks, its ruling family perhaps better known among the general public for featuring prominently in the popular martial arts novels by Jin Yong (such as Demi-God and Semi-Devils and The Legend of the Condor Heroes) than for their actual historical achievements. But then again, many things are possible in our game, and perhaps some of you will raise them to legendary levels of Prowess.

​
As the primary tier of governorship under the Chinese hegemony is the duchy tier, we’re going to compress duchies and counties into the same section and show off the former while talking mainly about the latter, since the precise borders counties are undergoing a bit of adjustment right now (to try and further minimize the projection distortion mentioned earlier) and are small enough that their names don’t appear at this scale, either.

One of the main challenges we encountered in drafting the province and county map for China is the fact that while it does possess a dizzying array of historically-documented administrative jurisdictions, they tended to undergo noticeable changes from one dynasty to the next.

Names were particularly subject to alteration, sometimes going through quite a number of them before then returning to their original or an earlier name: for this reason, please don’t take any of the names you might notice as odd to be final. Names from a mixture of times and places, including the present day, have been used as points of reference throughout development due to many different maps and sources being used, and will be subject to further revision.



In addition, settlement patterns tended to (understandably) heavily favor the rich Central Plains in the north, the Sichuan basin in the west, as well as key coastal areas, leaving much of the comparatively less populated interior and border areas to be partitioned among a relatively smaller number of jurisdictions encompassing vast swaths of land - their effective equivalent of our game's baronies or small counties sometimes exceeding the size of entire duchies.

In the interests of being as consistent as possible in our depiction of the Chinese administrative apparatus, we have drawn primarily from administrative units used during (but not exclusively by) the Tang dynasty known commonly as zhou, an element recognizable even today in the names of great cities such as Guangzhou and Hangzhou. This does not apply, however, to the name of the ineffable and inestimable city of Zhoukou, which uses a completely different character for the first component of its name.

Some artistic liberties have had to be taken, of course - some of these borders resulted in units that were simply far too large and had to be partitioned, others far too small and had to be merged, and while river crossings play an important role in our game's combat calculations, the assessors of administrative geography in the ninth century clearly played by different rules. That having been said, we still hope to strike a balance that favors historical accuracy as much as the necessary concessions to game mechanics and balance allow.

I would be remiss in my duties as designated dev diary author if I did not also take a moment to give you a glimpse of some of the (still very experimental) new aesthetic alterations to the terrain map. This is, as mentioned before, absolutely still a work in progress; it quite likely has changed even further in the simple span of time between my writing this dev diary and your reading it. That, however, is a subject for further discussion another time, so I’ll leave you with a taste of it and move on.



Something that those of you familiar with Chinese geography may have noticed is that the Chinese coastline in All Under Heaven has some noticeable differences when compared to the modern day. The twentieth and twenty-first centuries have seen extensive land reclamation efforts totaling thousands of square kilometers won from the sea, so in some areas of our map the coastline is distinctly different from how it appears on a map today, and we’ve made efforts to ensure our depiction will be as close to that of the period as possible.

Similarly, the course of some major rivers may be a source of momentary dissonance when you note that they are not quite exactly where you recall them being. The Yellow River, for example, changed course significantly even within our game's time period, but since navigable rivers are themselves inherently a component of the province map and not something able to be altered without major changes to the game’s fundamental underlying architecture, we had to settle on only one of its courses, the most enduring and the one in place in 867.

Populating China with historical figures is, as you might imagine, no small task, and has quickly proven itself to be the largest scale addition we’ve made to our historical database since release by a significant, all-encompassing margin. After the vagaries of historical research carried out for much of the rest of the game world, it's almost refreshing to encounter documentation as rich and abundant as it is here, a testament to the diligence and dedication of millennia of bureaucrats and functionaries.


[Wang Anshi’s two sons were indeed both named Wang Pang - but only in English: the Chinese characters for their names were different!]

That having been said, in some ways the system that produced such a treasure trove of documentation itself poses a challenge as much as it is a boon to our researchers and design. Magistrates and governors in China held office for what we would consider to be extremely short periods of time, very often only a year.

As a result of this, some ruler assignments (at least when the game starts) have had to be a little less rigid than we might usually prefer in cases where we don’t have known placements available for the exact years in which the game starts.

Something else we're specifically working to do as much as possible here is to also include significant numbers of historical figures and their families (such as the patriotic general Yue Fei, the Jin founder Wanyan Aguda, or the Tang warlord An Lushan) who lived during or prior to our gameplay period in our game files, and not just those who were alive or had living descendants at each of our current three start dates.

This way, modders who wish to explore alternative periods in Chinese history will have an easier time and find them already populated with key figures, as well as making things simpler for ourselves, as well, should we choose to add another start date to the game. This is not a declaration of intent to do so (nor not do so), but rather just an investment in making things more straightforward for future developers should we choose to pursue that possibility further.

There is one more thing I would like to briefly discuss, as I know full well that for a great many of you this aspect of the expansion is of paramount concern: performance.

We have significantly extended the existing map to encompass the rest of Asia, adding thousands of historical figures to ensure the same degree of fidelity and depth as we have to Europe or anywhere else in the game world. We are aware, of course, that this raises concerns of potential performance difficulties.

For that reason, improving performance is something that we're also working on very seriously while developing All Under Heaven, to ensure that your enjoyment of the game will not suffer or be reduced from this broadening of its horizons, and that you can freely and thoroughly enjoy all that the expansion has to offer.

Please be assured that we're working hard at it just as much as the rest of the expansion, and we will go into more detail in the future in a developer diary dedicated exclusively to this subject.

​
And so we come to the conclusion of today’s dev diary. I hope this has been an informative glimpse into what China will look like in All Under Heaven, and maybe you’ve already spotted somewhere you’d like to play in.

I’m happy to take any questions or feedback that you may have. My capacity to answer mechanical and gameplay questions related to China right now is limited, though, because that’s what we’re going to be digging into in next week’s dev diary. Look forward to it, and thank you for reading!

Hello and welcome to this first development diary about the upcoming All Under Heaven DLC, and its associated update! I am Trin Tragula, one of the design leads on Crusader Kings III and today I get to talk about East Asia in the middle ages!

This diary is going to be a high level one, where we look at the vision for the entire expansion and all we aim to do in it. It will be followed by many more detailed diaries for the features and the individual regions of the expansion.


[A first look at the world of Crusader Kings with everything between the Atlantic and the Pacific Ocean. Like everything else in this diary the map is work in progress and subject to change; this includes coloring of the map itself, which is something we are experimenting a bit with right now. Don’t hesitate to tell us what you think of it!]

Apart from being Grand Strategy Games, the Paradox games have, for me personally, always also been a way to discover the entire world in a given time period, something that is both a game and a travel guide to the past. With this update, CK will finally get rid of the last artificial barriers to that kind of experience, as the map will no longer arbitrarily end in Burma and Tibet. This lets us shine a spotlight on some of the most interesting states of the time period, such as Tang and Song China, Heian Japan, Angkor, and many others.

With All Under Heaven, we want to not just add the missing parts of the map but also fill it with the living world of the past. The goal is that the new part of the map should feel like an integral part of the game. This means new governments with their own features, but it also means things like special buildings, new cultural traditions, and visual variety. East Asia will have its own look, with event illustrations, clothes, ethnicities, holdings, throne rooms, artifacts, and much more.



As a final word of this introduction: this is also a work in progress. This is a vision and an overview of what we are making, but development is an iterative process and so this diary is also an opportunity for you to give your input on the things we are looking to add. More details are also forthcoming for each and every thing here in the coming diaries but there is nothing stopping you from telling us already if there are things you think we should include or change. This goes for art, features, and even the map itself.

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A central focus of an East Asian expansion, by virtue of its sheer size as well as the reach and impact of its influence and culture, has to be China. While it was in a very different situation in 867, 1066 and 1178 respectively, China remains both a state that others emulated and a political constant in all of these dates.

We will talk a lot more about China and its features in future diaries, but here is a short overview of what we have planned and how we see its purpose.

Since China is a de jure realm that is more expansive than any one of the empires we currently have in the game, we are adding a new title tier for it - a Hegemony. In all our start dates, China is the only existing Hegemony, but others can be created using the decisions we have for uniting India or Rome. For now, there is no generic way to create these super-empires, and beyond China there are no de-jure ones. Instead, we reserve its use for special cases with bespoke rules and justifications.



China was a bureaucratic state, and though it differed a bit depending on era, positions in government as well as in provincial administration were largely given to career officials based on their perceived merit. Thousands would take the imperial examinations in order to start their career in public service, leading to possibly the most well-educated government apparatus in the world.

In All Under Heaven, the Hegemony of China has a special type of government called the Celestial Government. It builds on the Administrative Government introduced in Roads to Power for the Byzantine Empire. House heads and governors are playable, and can build up Influence and acquire positions, while families have a domicile representing their permanent powerbase that they can build up over time.

Where the Byzantine governors are solely appointed based on spending Influence however, the Chinese system relies more closely on Merit. Merit is a value that you build up during a lifetime in public service, through serving in important jobs and taking good decisions. Merit cannot be spent like a currency, instead it is how you are compared to other applicants for any position. A high merit score might mean you can become a circuit (kingdom) tier governor, or even a minister in the central government. Merit does not replace Influence since Influence can still be earned and spent for more underhanded uses, even in a Celestial realm.



In order to ensure a healthy crop of potential administrators at all times, the Empire will regularly host examination activities where the applicants can earn a base merit score (or even a higher one) by demonstrating their skills at the Confucian classics, literary style, and essay writing.

The Emperor, on the other hand, can control what skills are prioritized in the examinations by controlling the curriculum when hosting Exams. Whatever qualities are emphasized will shape which characters are likely to be able to become governors in the future.

Governors in China will not support themselves using the money from the region they govern. Instead they will send the funds upwards, to the Emperor and his central treasury. The emperor then pays out a salary (gold) to the governor but also assigns funds to the respective treasury of all governorships in the realm.

Only gold can be spent on personal expenses, such as building up your family estate, paying for tutorship for your children, and so on. Treasury is what is used for any expenses related to governing. This includes things like building buildings, paying troops, or disaster relief.

Like with everything in this diary, there will be more information about the treasury, including details around how money can be put into or taken out of it by characters, in a future China-centric Developer Diary.

Chinese history is traditionally ordered by the dynasty currently in power. This is a phenomenon that goes far back in time, where often a new dynasty would prioritize writing the history of their predecessors. They would use the imperial archives to chart out and describe how the old dynasty rose, how they ruled and how they eventually lost their way and succumbed to corruption (leaving an opening for the new dynasty to save the day and restore order and propriety).

In our timeline, the Tang, once a very successful and expansive dynasty that ruled a vast and prosperous realm, are already troubled by 867. About 40 years from this start date, their dynasty would break into a multi-factional civil war known as the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Era. Eventually the Song took power and built a new dynasty based even more strongly on the principles of bureaucracy and internal development.

The Song were eventually replaced by the Yuan dynasty of Kublai Khan, who ruled a China that was unmistakably Chinese, but also still very Mongol dominated. The Yuan and other foreign dynasties are often referred to as Conquest Dynasties due to their different nature (at least initially).



In All Under Heaven, we have taken inspiration from how the Chinese described this at the time, a Dynastic Cycle where China can be in a stable era, essentially a type of golden age, where it can build its wealth and progress orienting themselves outwards (like the Tang), focusing on military expansion and a vast tributary network. Another focus can be advancing the core region, with great building projects, economic development, innovation and a strong bureaucracy (more like the Song or later Ming).

Common to both types of Stable eras (Expansion and Advancement) is that they can go on for a very long time. As long as the rulers put the right people in positions of government, protect their subjects from invasions and act swiftly against natural disasters, they are able to draw on the resources of China to perform great things. The eras come with different possibilities and rules for how to achieve these goals. In this way China’s neighbors will also know what to expect from the neighboring behemoth.

Common to both stable eras is that how Legitimacy is built and maintained relates to you moving in alignment with the era. If your dynasty has chosen an Expansion era then your Legitimacy will suffer if you fail to expand and will be even more damaged if outsiders take land or raid your lands.

With the ruling dynasty faltering, the cycle will eventually proceed to the Unstable Era. This is an era with its own rules and impact, just like the two stable variants, but here it is mainly to signify a period of change. Here people have begun to question the mandate of the rulers, and every action they take is under closer scrutiny. Natural disasters, wars, and other things will be viewed in a much more negative light, especially if the central government is unable to act quickly on them. Governors will be less selfless and may not take their responsibilities to the center as seriously, instead preparing for their own future.

Should the Emperor’s Legitimacy be impacted strongly enough, this era is very likely to slide into a Chaotic Era, where the ruling dynasty will fracture into a multi-factional civil war, much like what happened in the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Era.

Should the ruling dynasty, on the other hand, navigate the unstable era well enough and emerge on the other side, then they will once again enter a stable era and be able to choose between Advancement and Expansion once more. In the 867 bookmark the Tang starts in the unstable era.

In the Chaotic Era, the Hegemony of China title is suspended while the various empires, kingdoms and duchies in the Chinese realm are splintered into separate realms. These will quickly try to form their own dynasties, in conflict with each other. Once a winner emerges China will once again enter a stable phase, and the new ruling dynasty will be seen to have the Mandate of Heaven to rule the restored Hegemony of China. This will mean choosing a type of stable era as well as taking some other decisions about your long term goals (including what capital to use and the traditional name and color to associate with your dynasty).

There is much more to be said about the Dynastic Cycle, including how your bureaucrats coordinate to push for trying to change the current type of era, and how it deals with foreign conquest dynasties, but most of that will have to wait for a future diary of its own.

For the Chinese Empire, tributaries are not at all what they are to the rulers in the steppe. Independent rulers can choose to enter a relationship with China and be legitimized by trappings of authority from China. The tributary is not expected to play any part in China’s wars, and China will also not defend its tributaries as a general rule, it will however be less likely to be attacked directly.

Tributaries can attempt to create a closer relationship with their Suzerain Hegemon by going on Tributary missions to the Chinese court, bringing gifts, goods, eunuchs, and other things to please the Emperor. In return they may receive economic benefits, legitimizing artifacts or progress towards Chinese innovations.

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One of the more unique regions of the medieval world is Japan. In our timeline (covering 867-1453 AD), Japan is originally a state that is largely inspired by the Chinese way of doing things, with governors who do not directly own land, and a vibrant capital in Kyoto. Noble families play a bigger part in ceremony, fine arts, and intrigue than they do in China, but military campaigns tend to be small and directed at the Ainu or Emishi in the eastern part of the island rather than other families in the realm.

Over time, some nobles manage to install themselves in hereditary fiefs, and the country starts undergoing a gradual militarization, culminating in the establishment of something much closer to the feudal realms of the west.

Unlike Administrative realms, where governorships are generally duchies, (and unlike China where they can be any tier) Japanese governorships are generally counties. This means power is a lot more fragmented than it is in other realms.

In 867 and 1066, the vast majority of counties are held by Ritsuryō rulers - a government very similar to Administrative - while by 1178 most of Japan is ruled by local Soryō lords - more akin to Feudal.

Ritsuryō rulers use Influence to secure appointments and generally don’t have strong armies (unless enabled by their House-related bonuses as described below).

Soryō vassals, on the other hand, have gained de facto control of a region from the central state and made it a permanent fief. Their succession is hereditary, their armies are stronger, and they can more easily expand militarily to control multiple counties. Soryō vassals can be useful to the empire in times of war, but generally they are a liability and a Ritsuryō that tries to turn their governorship into a Soryō fief will be considered a criminal.

The long-term relationships between different Houses are now tracked, and move along a sliding scale from great friendship to intense rivalry. Whenever a member of a House takes a significant friendly or hostile action against another House’s member, such as a marriage or a murder, the relation between the Houses will change to reflect the act.



In Japan, houses can also form Blocs. These are groups of houses that all follow the head of one house, largely based on house relations. A bloc is a military alliance that is represented on the map, similar to steppe confederations, though with a clear leader and more far-reaching responsibilities. Bloc members will join the factions and wars of their leader (offensive as well as defensive). This means that when wars break out in Japan they are not as limited despite the fragmented political situation.

In our era, the Japanese Emperors had varying degrees of power, but were generally relegated to a more ceremonial role than many of their foreign counterparts. The de facto ruler of Japan in all but name is usually the Kampaku, a Ritsuryō bureaucrat who rules on the Emperor’s behalf.

The succession of the Kampaku is determined in a similar way to the Byzantine Emperor’s acclamation, but with a different set of weights (favoring among other things marriage ties with the imperial family).

The Emperor, or Ten’nō, still has great ceremonial importance and is playable, but only directly rules his own family manor in all our start dates. Like many of the noble families in Japan, he resides in the imperial capital of Kyoto.



Only Ritsuryō rulers may become Kampaku by appointment, but Soryō rulers can take the top job if they can build a powerful enough Faction, and thus establish themselves as a Shōgun (the Soryō equivalent of a Kampaku) by force. The Emperor themselves can also aspire to the top position and, if appointed as Kampaku, is given the option to abdicate the imperial throne and rule as a cloistered emperor, representing periods of strong royal influence.

Since the Kampaku, or Shōgun, essentially acts as the top liege in the Japanese realm, they wield an enormous amount of power, and will also make use of special Imperial Policy laws to control what can and cannot be done by vassals in the realm. Should a Shōgunate be established by a Soryō ruler this will start to usher in a societal change with more and more of the vassals in Japan forming Soryō fiefs.

With most vassals in Japan starting out holding just one county, there is a great need for other ways to build permanent power. The family manor, which is available to both Soryō and Ritsuryō rulers, is one way to build up durable power, and Japanese rulers will have many unique manor buildings for this purpose. Costs and benefits are both modified to better fit the needs and resources available in Japan. For the Soryō especially, this is how special men-at-arms are strengthened and unlocked.

Another way to build up the power of your house is to invest your prestige into House Aspirations. House aspirations have a theme and spending more prestige to upgrade them will unlock abilities and modifiers that will allow you to both specialize and grow the resources available to you. Aspirations will allow you to shape the strengths of your House by focusing on military might, intrigue, or economic development, and will also unlock certain upgrades for your family manor.

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Southeast Asia in this timeline is not yet as close to the Chinese sphere of influence as Japan or Korea. The mainland as well as the islands are a mix of indigenous faiths with tribal rulers and Indophile states practicing Hinduism or Buddhism. Unlike the bureaucratic nature of the realms to their north, the realms here are often more transitory in nature. Small central realms often control networks of tributaries that contract or grow with relatively little drama. The Great Empires of this region were often more advanced versions of this, with priests administering the realm on behalf of self proclaimed God Kings based in enormous temple cities.

In All Under Heaven, Buddhist and Hindu states in southeast Asia will predominantly start with the new Mandala Government. This government form initially has a lower vassal and domain limit, and instead relies on its own flavor of tributaries in a greater way.

Mandala realms have the new Temple Citadel as their main holding type, though they can also hold castles and temples.

An independent Mandala ruler is considered a God King, or Devaraja. Most of your authority and power will stem from piety and many things that would otherwise cost prestige or even gold will now consume piety.

To be a Devaraja means aspiring to be an ideal ruler in Buddhism or Hinduism, with your radiance attracting tributaries and vassals to your cause. The more convincing you are in this respect the more tributaries you will be able to steal from other rulers, and the more your power can grow.

Devarajas also have access to several new levels of devotion, with increasing benefits that will increase the initially restrictive domain and vassal limits of the government. By advancing your status as a God King, a Mandala can eventually end up quite powerful, even if the initial drawbacks in the form of lower vassal and domain limits might make the government seem weak at first glance.




As a God King, the cult around your person is essentially the same thing as your authority as a ruler. To remind everyone of their power, rulers would construct great temple cities. Complexes such as Angkor Wat or Borobudur still stand today and demonstrated the divine power of rulers by showcasing their power and by providing a ceremonial center for the realms of the god kings.

Capital Temples make use of the new Great Project feature to let you, your vassals, and your tributaries invest in the growth of your Capital Temple.

While they are costly, Capital Temples are the first way in which you can alleviate the domain and vassal limit restrictions of your government type along with many other bonuses. A grand capital temple is also what will make tributaries remain with your heirs, who may not yet be as impressive in their role as divine rulers as you are.

Similar to the Japanese House Aspirations, as a God King you will be able to invest piety into developing your personal cult. Focusing on warlike qualities will make it easier to gain piety through wars. Focusing on serenity might instead mean you can earn piety through more peaceful means, as an example. Your choice of Devaraja aspects will also decide what benefits you get from having high levels of devotion.

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As mentioned above, another new feature to this update is Great Projects. This is a way for multiple rulers to pool their resources together to create something. Usually, this would be the vassals in a realm coming together to help fund something like the Great Wall, but it can also be local governors banding together to help push through disaster relief after a Natural Disaster. Benefits can be both direct, related to what the goal of the project itself is, and more individual, in terms of what the contributors get for helping.

A new type of building slot has also been introduced to allow Great Projects to create their own type of buildings that coexists with Special Buildings or Monuments. Not all Great Projects relate to a great building or monument however, though all will have tangible effects once they are completed.

There are a number of new Great Projects introduced in All Under Heaven. Like with all other features described today, we will talk more about what projects exist and about Great Projects as a feature in a future diary.

Natural Disasters are a type of recurring Situation that can strike in known areas. While the disaster impact is over relatively quickly, the Situation will linger and center on the rebuilding of the region after something like a great flood.

Every Natural disaster comes with a related Great Project, which means multiple characters in the same area can come together to fund the recovery effort. To this end, the projects also come with a number of optional investments that can potentially leverage the situation either for political benefits or lead to rebuilding the area to be more prosperous than it was prior to the disaster. Our intent here is not that natural disasters be a random and extremely punishing blow to your game but rather something to overcome that can present you with opportunities to demonstrate your skills as a ruler and use it as a possibility to ultimately advance your goals.

While China was enormously important in East Asia and its surroundings, for many parts of the world China’s impact was more indirect. We wanted to take the opportunity to include this in the expansion, since it was still quite tangible.

For millennia, goods and innovations have flowed from China towards the west. Trade is not a feature of All Under Heaven, but the Silk Road will be visible on the map and controlling its entrepots will yield economic benefits if China is in an era where it is stable. Another venue that will be open to western rulers is that travelers to the entrepots of the Silk Road may help spread Chinese innovations to their home realms.

This diary tries to give an overview of all major features for the expansion, but it also leaves a lot unsaid for future diaries. In the coming weeks, we will be giving a closer overview of not only the features already described but also things not mentioned, such as Korea, the northern steppe, the tribal states in southeast Asia, and, of course, the map itself. Next week’s diary will start out by giving an overview of the new map, which will then be followed by more detailed breakdowns as we go through the features for each area.